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THE
REBUILDING OF EUROPE
Other Books by David Jayne Hill
A History of Diplomacy in the In-
ternational Development of Europe.
Vol. I — The Struggle for Universal
Empire. With 5 Colored Maps,
Chronological Tables, List of
Treaties and Index. Pp. XXIII-
481. $5.00.
Vol II— The Establishment of Ter-
ritorial Sovereignty. With 4 Col-
ored Maps, Tables, etc. Pp.
XXIV-688. $5.00.
Vol. Ill — The Diplomacy of the Age
of Absolutism. With 5 Colored
Maps, Tables, etc. Pp. XXVI-
706. $6.00.
World Organization, as Affected by
the Nature of the Modern State.
Pp. IX-2I4. $1.50.
Translated also into French and German.
The People's Government.
Pp. X-288. $1.25 net.
Americanism — What It Is.
Pp. XV-283. $1.25 net.
THE
REBUILDING OF EUROPE
A SURVEY OF FORCES
AND CONDITIONS
BY
DAVID JAYNE HILL
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1917
Copyright, 1917, by
The Century Co.
Published, October, 1917
PREFACE
The world is passing through the birth pan
of a new historic period. Europe, because it co
trols the destiny of the greater part of the earl
was the first to feel these convulsions, but t
transformation taking place is essentially a wor
movement.
The struggle now going on has been various
called "a trade war," a contest regarding "t
destiny of the smaller states," "a war for demc
racy," and "a war for principles." No one
these expressions quite definitely conveys the re
significance of the Great War, because no one
them adequately presents to the mind its relatii
to the changes in political thought that have c
curred during the last few decades.
What has been most completely overlooked
the fact that the Great War was not in its begi
ning, and is not now, so much a struggle betwei
different forms of government as it is a questi<
regarding the purpose and spirit of all gover:
vi PREFACE
ments. The Austrian-Serbian-Russian conflict,
promoted by Germany with ulterior designs, did
not in any way involve forms of government. All
the participants were monarchies, and no issue
for or against democracy was presented. When
France and England, acting as their interests and
obligations required, were afterward forced into
the fray, even then there was no question of the in-
ternal organization of governments, but it was
seen to be a war for the salvation of Europe as
a society of independent states. It has never
become a war for democracy in the sense that
there is an attempt by any nation to universalize
a democratic form of government. That would
be a doubtful venture, inconsistent with the true
nature of democracy.
The truth is that the Great War is a revolution
against the alleged rights of arbitrary force, ren-
dered necessary by the failure to reach the goal
of a secure international organization by an evo-
lutionary process.
Modern nations have succeeded, with a few
exceptions, in developing constitutional govern-
ments in which ideas of justice have been em-
bodied in systems of law, but they have also in-
PREFACE
vn
herited international traditions that were orig-
inated in an age when military force was the basis
of state existence. These traditions are embodied
in the following four propositions:
(1) The essence of a state is "sovereignty,"
defined as "supreme power."
(2) A sovereign state has the right to declare
war upon any other sovereign state for any rea-
son that seems to it sufficient.
(3) An act of conquest by the exercise of
superior military force entitles the conqueror to
the possession of the conquered territory.
(4) The population goes with the land and
becomes subject to the will of the conqueror.
Such monstrous doctrines as these would never
have been invented by any jurist or statesman un-
der the constitutional regime, yet they are the
postulates that underlie all the great European
settlements, and have never been repudiated by
any European international congress, not even by
the conferences held at The Hague in 1899 and
1907. On the contrary, these propositions were
tacitly assumed as composing the unwritten con-
stitution of the European system of sovereign
states, and virtually all the powers there repre-
viii PREFACE
sented had at some time, and in some cases
habitually, put them into practice.
What gave to the Hague conferences their great
interest for the public generally was the hope
that there would come out of them some new
enunciation of international law that would put
an end to war and conquest. This was the strong
human current that circled about the conferences,
but among the delegates it was well understood
that a direct blow aimed at any one of the four
propositions just stated would mean the dissolu-
tion of the conference, and, if insisted upon, would
involve a general war, for there were still na-
tional ambitions which war alone could satisfy.
Peace, it was hoped, might be prolonged by
reliance upon the old see-saw, "The balance of
power," fortified by increased armaments. Sup-
plementary to this was the pious wish, which in
the clearer heads never amounted to faith, that
no nation would be guilty of dishonor by an
abuse of power, although its freedom to do so was
undisputed. Gently and timidly, restrictions
upon the too barbarous exercise of the state's
traditionally recognized prerogatives were pro-
posed in the form of conventions about war on
PREFACE ix
land and war on the sea, with provisions for an
honorable settlement of differences if any nation
desired to be just; but even these measures were
long contested, and the more important of them
persistently opposed by certain powers.
The process of peaceful evolution toward in-
ternational justice having failed to throw off the
thraldom imposed upon Europe by the tradition
of absolute sovereignty and its corollaries, it re-
quired no special clairvoyance to see that a revolu-
tion would some day come born of blood and fire.
It has come. Great powers, appealing to the in-
famous dogma of unlimited right on the part of
the state, have placed their wicked "necessities"
above all law, above all morality, above all hu-
nanity, and have plunged Europe and a great part
of the world into a yawning gulf of death and
devastation. To resist that arrogance and to end
not only this war, but any war based on these
assumptions, is the aim of the resisting powers.
It is the making of a new world ; but there can be
no new world until there is a new Europe in which
the dogma that the state is a licensed brigand is
smitten dead.
It is the purpose of this volume to show that
x PREFACE
this dogma, and not any particular form of mere
state organization, is the real enemy that must be
destroyed. The incidents of the Great War are
well known and require no mention here. It is
to the deeper problems that attention should be
directed. Nor is it the intention of this little
book to add to the array of purely subjective
solutions of these problems, — for the true solu-
tion can be found only by the united efforts of a
preponderance of the great powers, — but rather
to point out what are the really fundamental is-
sues involved in the Great War, and to take ac-
count of the forces and conditions which may aid
or hinder the solution.
Six of the chapters contained in this volume
were, in substance, first presented to the public
last March in the form of lectures on the Schouler
Foundation at the Johns Hopkins University;
five of them were in part printed in the Century
Magazine for May, June, July, September, and
October of the present year.
Washington, D. C.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I Europe's Heritage oe Evil 3
II International Ideals 38
III Economic Imperialism 68
IV The Vision oe a Commonwealth . . .104
V The Transfiguration oe the German
Empire 136
VI International Organization . . . .172
VII The Constructive Power of Democracy . 208
VIII America's Interest in the New Europe . 236
Index 283
THE REBUILDING OF
EUROPE
THE REBUILDING OF
EUROPE
CHAPTER I
EUROPE'S HERITAGE OF EVIL
IN the retrospect of future historians the year
1914 may have a place not less important
than the year 1453, which has been accepted as
marking the dividing line between medieval and
modern history. The fall of Constantinople and
the establishment of the Ottoman Turks in Eu-
rope revealed the insufficiency of the bond that
had held Christendom together. In like man-
ner the present European War reveals the in-
adequacy of purely national conceptions for the
complete organization of mankind; for as Chris-
tendom failed to unite the whole world by faith,
so civilization has failed to maintain itself by a
mere balance of forces.
The great tragedy of history has been the con-
4 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
flict between the universal humanism that Rome
endeavored to establish, first by law and after-
ward by faith, and the tribalism of the primitive
European races. In the fifteenth century tribal-
ism triumphed. The moral unity of Europe,
which Rome had vainly tried to secure, wholly
disappeared. Both the empire and the papacy,
in which great minds had placed implicit faith,
proved unable, in the face of racial conflicts,
either to rule the world or to preserve the co-
herence of Christendom. All that had given
grandeur to Rome seemed to have ended in failure
when the Greek Empire, the last bulwark of
Roman imperialism, already long and bitterly
alienated from the Roman Curia, paid the pen-
alty of separatism, and fell before the Ottoman as-
sault. With it the splendid postulates of the
Roman imperial idea — the essential unity of man-
kind, the supremacy of law based upon reason
and divine command, the moral solidarity of all
who accepted the formulae of faith, and the ef-
fective organization of peace as a condition of
human happiness — suffered a fatal catastrophe.
In place of the Pax Romana, Faustrecht, the right
of the mailed fist, widely prevailed within the
EUROPE'S HERITAGE OF EVIL 5
confines of Christendom. Slowly dying during
a thousand years, the traditions of the ancient
world, which the Greek Empire had endeavored
to preserve long after they had been undermined
by tribalism in the West, were now definitively
abandoned. The future was seen to belong to
the separate nations, which alone possessed a
strong sense of unity. The disparity of races, the
spirit of local independence, the conflict between
the spiritual and the temporal forms of obedience,
combined to render possible the development of
powerful national monarchies, and dynastic am-
bition was eager to make use of them for its own
designs.
There was, indeed, an element of progress in
this reassertion of the tribal spirit. The rule of
Rome had destroyed the balance between law and
liberty. The vital energies of the primitive races
could not be thus suppressed. All the rich vari-
ety of human diversity pressed the issue of na-
tionality. In order to give to law its complete
authority, it was necessary that it should be de-
veloped out of experience rather than imposed as
a dominant system. Each nation must arrive
6 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
at the common destination by pursuing its own
path and under its own leadership. The forma-
tion of nation-states was, therefore, morally in-
evitable. It was essential to the full development
of human capacities.
The defect in this process of evolution lay in
the cruelty and ignorance of the barbarians out
of whom these nation-states were formed. The
procedure was of necessity a work of force rather
than a work of intelligence. On the part of the
masses of the population the instinct of avoiding
danger gave to any efficient protector a vast au-
thority. On the part of natural leaders the in-
stinct of domination became the shaping power of
the state. As a result, the nation-state, slowly
evolving from the feudal state, became a dynastic
creation, in which race, the natural basis of na-
tionality, played a subordinate role. Conquest
seldom proceeded along strictly ethnic lines.
The task was primarily geographic expansion and
strategic security. Once conquered, the differ-
ent races gradually coalesced with their conquer-
ors to form distinct national units in which blood
yielded supremacy to national traditions, and the
most opposite diversities of race, language, and
EUROPE'S HERITAGE OF EVIL 7
religious belief were thus finally compounded into
the substance of the nation-states.
This, in brief outline, is the history of vir-
tually all the nation-states of Europe. Not one
of them can boast of absolute purity of race. Not
one of them can establish a claim that its state-
hood is founded on ethnic homogeneity. Not
one of them can profess that it is the product of
conscious and voluntary adhesion to a predeter-
mined theory of what the state should be and who
should compose its substance.
And yet these nation-states are in no sense mere
accidents. However self-conscious some of them
may have become, they were originally the crea-
tions of dynastic purpose. The unity they now
possess was derived from the sense of community
that gradually grew up within them through close
contact, common interests, common sufferings,
and common triumphs ; but they are all in reality
creations of force, exercised chiefly by dominant
dynasties, under which in the process of time
they have arrived at a condition of national self-
consciousness.
This in some cases has been so intense that
the will of the nation has become more powerful
8 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
than the will of the dynasty; which, therefore, has
either been cast off entirely, as in France, which
exists by the will of the nation, or permitted to
survive as a mere symbol of national unity, as in
England. Only in a few instances does the
dynasty continue to exercise uncontrolled author-
ity.
In the process of forming the nation-state two
instruments have been employed for the realiza-
tion of dynastic purposes: war and marriage.
The territorial expansion obtained by the war-
like energies of a conquering tribe under the
leadership of a hereditary chief has been vastly
aided by the union of such tribes through the in-
termarriage of their chiefs and the process of in-
heritance, thus producing a tribe within a tribe.
Great empires have been formed by wedlock, as
mighty rivers are produced by the confluence of
many tributaries into one stream. The house
of Hapsburg, for example, owes more to Venus
than to Mars. In the course of its history whole
peoples, remote from one another in space and
still more remote in character, have been trans-
ferred to these foreign rulers by marriage con-
tracts. The nation-state has seldom been ruled
EUROPE'S HERITAGE OF EVIL 9
by the pure blood of even its own dominant tribe.
From the very beginning royalty has been in
some degree an international institution, a kind
of super-tribe destined to rule by the mere fact
of heredity, composed of kinsmen at the altar, but
of foemen in the field. And, notwithstanding the
devotion of monarchs to nationalism, there has
always existed a secret solidarity of royal inter-
ests.
Success in war always creates its own moral
standards, and dynasticism has not failed to do
so. Republican Rome took pride in never wag-
ing an unjust war, and had its college of fetials
to determine whether an action even against bar-
barians was just. This practice arose from a
supreme devotion to the idea of law and a rever-
ence for human reason as the source of law. The
founders and expanders of the nation-states have
entertained no such scruples. They have adopted
the motto that the will of the prince is law, and
that there is no binding law above it. The na-
tion-states, and, in truth, most others, have as-
sented to this dictum, the only question in de-
bate being who really possesses the authority of
the prince.
10 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
The "sovereign," whoever he is, being without
a law to govern him, an abstract attribute of the
ruler, called "sovereignty," has been generally
accepted as the substance of the state, and its
powers have been conceived to be, as those of
the absolute prince confessedly were, altogether
unlimited. Since Christendom was abolished,
and tribalism has prevailed, unlimited power has
been recognized, and is still recognized, in the
public law of Europe as the foundation of the
state.
The most fundamental of all the questions
arising out of the Great War is, Can this open
repudiation of humanism in the interest of tribal-
ism be permitted to endure? Is it true that a
sovereign — any sovereign, even the totality of the
so-called "sovereign people," of any tribe or na-
tion-state — has a right to claim unlimited au-
thority or even authority limited only by the ex-
tent of its power? Is there not a law for the con-
duct of states, written or unwritten, which all
sovereigns should be required to obey, wholly ir-
respective of the theoretical source or actual ex-
tent of their power? But if there is such a law,
recognized or unrecognized, the conception of
EUROPE'S HERITAGE OF EVIL 11
sovereignty as in its nature absolute and un-
limited is evidently false.
It was Machiavelli who expounded the tribal
theory of the state and the methods of securing
its advancement; and in this he was inventing no
system of his own, but merely stating in definite
terms the principles which successful monarchs
were already putting into practice. " 'The
Prince,' " declares Villari, "had a more direct ac-
tion on real life than any other book in the
world, and a larger share in emancipating Eu-
rope from the Middle Ages" ; but it would be more
exact to say that Machiavelli's work, written in
1513 and published in 1532, was the perfect ex-
pression of an emancipation from moral re-
straits far advanced. The Christian idealism of
the Middle Ages had already largely disap-
peared. The old grounds of obligation had been
swept away. Men looked for their safety to the
nation-state rather than to the solidarity of Chris-
tendom; and the state, as Machiavelli's gospel
proclaimed it, consisted in absolute and irrespon-
sible control exercised by one man who should em-
body its unity, strength, and authority.
12 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
Thus began the modern world. The concep-
tions of the Roman law, especially those of im-
perium and majestas, were partly revived in sup-
port of the royal dynasties in their struggle with
the residues of feudalism, which resulted in the
development of the national monarchies; but
they had lost their note of universality. Even
Christianity ceased to be ecumenical. There re-
mained, indeed, a traditional fellowship and fra-
ternity of kings, but it was virtually little more
than a code of formal etiquette.
With the dissolution of the feudal organiza-
tion through the predominance of the national
monarchies disappeared that sense of mutual ob-
ligation which under the feudal regime had con-
stituted an ethical bond between the different or-
ders of society. What remained was the bare
conception of irresponsible "sovereignty" consid-
ered as a divinely implanted, absolute, unlimited,
and indivisible prerogative of personal rule, the
charter right of each dynasty to seek its own ag-
grandizement, preponderance, and glory regard-
less of all considerations of race, reason, or re-
ligion.
With such a conception of the nature of the
EUROPE'S HERITAGE OF EVIL 1.
state, the whole system of international relation:
was necessarily based upon military force. Cas
ually formed customs, usually the expression o
superior power or of temporary expediency, sup
plemented by transitory alliances and enforcec
conventions, supplied the only rules that obtaine(
general recognition. Until Grotius appealed t<
the ethical motive, and the treaties of Westphali:
recognized the de jure rights of territorial sover
eignty, there was among the nations of Europ
no semblance of public law which jurisprudenc
could recognize. But even after the Peace o
Westphalia, the so-called "law of nations" wa
little more than a theoretical acceptance of th
equal rights of autonomous sovereigns, each o
whom could work his will without interferenc
within his own domains, leaving to each ruler th
unquestioned prerogative of dictating the religioi
of his own subjects, of taxing them, of armin
them, and of making war with their united force
for his own advantage. In effect, the Peace o
Westphalia, by rendering even petty princes absc
lute, permitted more than three hundred and sixt
independent rulers to carry on the sanguinar
game of war for plunder or conquest without re
14 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
straint; and all, left free to destroy one another,
were thus entitled by public law, through war and
diplomacy, to seek their fortunes with complete
autonomy. Sovereignty, defined as "supreme
power," regardless of any principle of right, was
conceived to be the very essence of the state. It
remained simply to discover by a trial of strength
which power was in reality supreme.
When in its moral awakening the Europe of
the latter part of the eighteenth and early part of
the nineteenth century began to think for itself, —
or at least to follow the thinking of Locke, Mon-
tesquieu, Rousseau, Kant, and others who sought
to find the true foundations of the state in the
conception of law based upon the nature and ne-
cessities of men rather than upon dynastic power,
— Europe found itself under the incubus of this
sinister inheritance.
Without a convulsion that would shake the
whole of Europe to its foundations it was power-
less to throw it off. Rousseau had in "Le contrat
social" merely transferred the idea of sovereignty
from the monarch to the people, but he had not
essentially altered its character. It was still "su-
preme power," still the "absolute, indivisible, and
EUROPE'S HERITAGE OF EVIL 1
perpetual" thing which Jean Bodin, seeking t
give royalty a philosophical pedestal to stam
upon, had said it was. Inherent in the people, i
was still the personification of all the public pow
ers ; and the volonte generate, the general will, re
gardless of its moral qualities, was for each sep
arate state, the unlimited, irresponsible source o
law.
When the French Revolution judged and con
demned the king, it was done as a sovereign act
and was, therefore, not permitted to be questionei
by the rest of Europe. Was not sovereignty ab
solute? Then it belonged to France. Was it nc
indivisible? Then it belonged to the Frenc
people. Was it not perpetual ? Who, then, couL
ever take it away or in any way dispute it? Am
thus the volonte generate of one nation, in the per
son of the residuary legatee of the Revolution, Na
poleon Bonaparte, made emperor by the assent o
the volonte generate of France, assumed to act a
sovereign over the whole of Europe.
There was no moment during the whole revolu
tionary period when sovereignty ceased to be con
ceived as unlimited supreme power. And thu
the malign inheritance of Europe, in so far as i
16 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
was affected by the Revolution, was essentially un-
changed. Monarchy and democracy alike, with-
out distinction, have regarded sovereignty merely
as "supreme power," "absolute, indivisible, and
perpetual." Thus it stands in the text-books of
the law of nations. So many sovereignties, so
many absolute autocrats. Being the sole sources
of law, how can they be subject to law? And
there being no law which they may not set aside,
since it is but their creature, sovereign nations
are irresponsible, and have no more to do with
moral right or wrong than so many untamed ani-
mals seeking to satisfy their appetites. The right
to make war at will and to be answerable to no
one, that was, and is, the accepted doctrine of the
old Europe, which merely asserted itself anew in
1914.
This does not signify that it has never been
contested. More than three hundred years ago,
a now almost forgotten German jurist, though
recognizing sovereignty as the foundation of the
state, defined it as an attribute, not of the people
as an unorganized mass, but of a "body politic"
organized for the promotion of justice, deriving its
authority as a moral entity from the rights of its
EUROPE'S HERITAGE OF EVIL 1
constituent members, whom it is organized t
protect against wrong, and therefore from it
very nature charged with mutual rights an
obligations.
Here is pictured no irresponsible autocra
clothed with supreme power, but a responsibl
member of a family of nations, fitted to unite wit
other members of that family in extending ove
the whole earth the reign of law and justice, bu
above all required by the very nature and pur
pose of its authority to conduct itself in all it
relations, outward and inward, in accordance wit]
the principles from which its authority as ai
organ of justice is derived. Founded upon th
inherent rights of persons, and existing for thei
protection, a state in this sense can arrogate to it
self no sovereign right of conquest, whatever it
power, may be. The only authority it can clain
is authority to defend the rights and interests thu
committed to its guardianship. As a moral en
tity — for this is what Althusius taught that ;
state founded on rights necessarily is — it shoul<
be ready to apply the principles of justice an<
equity in its dealings with other states.
Thus understood, sovereignty is not merely i
18 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
name for supreme power. It is a right inherent
in a free and independent group of human beings,
possessing a definite territory, to form and main-
tain a government. Reduced to its simplest
terms, it is the right of a free community to pro-
vide for self-regulation and to maintain its own
existence. Whatever is necessary to that, and
nothing more, is included in this conception of the
state. Only in an incidental manner does it be-
long to the category of might. In its essential
attributes it belongs to the category of right.
Were this conception of sovereignty generally
accepted, justice and equity would not halt at the
frontiers of a nation. The right of war would
exist, but it would not be, as the old Europe has
universally recognized it to be, a virtually unlim-
ited right. There could be, under this conception,
no permanently subject peoples. There could be
no world dominion. There could be no legal
schemes of conquest. War would mean the pun-
ishment of offenders against the law of nations,
the suppression of anarchy and brigandage, re-
sistance to the ambitions of the conqueror.
But the old Europe has never been disposed to
give to sovereignty that meaning. It could not
EUROPE'S HERITAGE OF EVIL 19
do so while it was identified with royal legitimacy.
That principle triumphed a hundred years ago in
the Congress of Vienna, which strove to neutralize
the effects of the French Revolution by ending
forever the sovereignty of the people. Then fol-
lowed the effort to establish Europe firmly upon
the principles of absolutism by crushing out all
constitutional aspirations. To accomplish this
the unlimited right of war was necessary, for
without armed intervention by the allied sover-
eigns the task was hopeless. Legitimacy was to
be everywhere sustained by the Holy Alliance.
Wherever a state adopted a constitution, the pow-
ers bound themselves at the Conference of Trop-
pau, "if need be by arms, to bring back the
guilty state into the bosom of the Alliance."
The unlimited right of a sovereign state to make
war for any reason it considered sufficient, or for
no reason at all, thus seemed to be written into
the public law of Europe. That was the un-
hallowed inheritance which even modern democ-
racies have received from absolutism. Being
entitled to all the prerogatives of sovereignty as
historically understood, they have not repudiated
the heritage. And thus they have tacitly ac-
20 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
cepted the evil principle of the despotisms against
whose iniquities they have rebelled, and whose
pernicious influence they were struggling to throw
off.
In the call for the first Hague Conference "all
questions concerning the political relation of
states" were expressly excluded from the deliber-
ations of the conference. In that, and in the
second conference, rules were laid down regard-
ing the manner of conducting war, both on land
and sea, but nowhere were any regulations pre-
scribed regarding the causes or conditions of
declaring war that were to be considered legal or
illegal, just or unjust. As one of the best ac-
credited authorities on the subject says:
Theoretically, international law ought to determine the
causes for which war can be justly undertaken; in other
words, it ought to mark out as plainly as municipal law
what constitutes a wrong for which a remedy may be
sought at law. It might also not unreasonably go on to
discourage the commission of wrongs by investing a state
seeking redress with special rights, and by subjecting a
wrong-doer to special disabilities.
In fact, however, it does nothing of the kind.
The reason is not merely that there would be no
EUROPE'S HERITAGE OF EVIL 21
means except war for enforcing such rules, — for
that would apply equally to the regulations con-
cerning the manner of conducting war that have
been explicitly laid down, — but because no sov-
ereign state has thus far been disposed to pledge
itself not to engage in war except under condi-
tions that in harmony with its own principles
of legislation would be considered just. "Hence
both parties in every war are regarded as being in
an identical position, and consequently possessed
of equal rights." Aggressor and victim alike, tri-
umphant force and helpless innocence, these are
held in equal honor by the public law of Europe
as it now stands, and this law has been tacitly
accepted by the whole "family of nations" !
It is upon this unlimited right to resort to war,
and the consequent general irresponsibility in in-
ternational relations, that the idea of neutrality
reposes; and yet neutrality is historically an im-
mense step forward in the path of progress when
compared with the Machiavellian doctrine that no
opportunity for gain from the quarrels of others
should be allowed to pass unutilized. In every
war, Machiavelli declares, one side or the other
22 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
will win, and the wise course for an intelligent
prince to pursue is to join at the proper moment
with the probable winner, whoever he may be, in
order to be able to share with him the spoils of
victory.
The modern doctrine of neutrality, which con-
siders war ah unavoidable evil, is no doubt an
amelioration of Machiavelli's policy; for, instead
of widening the range of hostilities, its aims to
narrow the area of conflict. It is inspired, how-
ever, chiefly by the consideration that it is a na-
tional right to avoid the infection of a pestilence
which the neutral power has not caused and for
which it is not responsible. So long as the bel-
ligerents, who are conceded the privilege of mu-
tual destruction, — but often with very unequal fa-
cilities for engaging in the conflict, — do not too
deeply offend the neutral states by their activities,
powerful nations feel justified in standing silent
and inactive while weak states are crushed into
subjection and the laws of war, which they them-
selves have helped to make, are violated.
From a moral point of view this appears to be a
strange proceeding for a member of the "family
of nations"; but it must be considered that this
EUROPE'S HERITAGE OF EVIL 23
is a family of a very peculiar kind. In it each
member, by tacit consent, is believed to fulfil his
whole duty by looking solely after his own inter-
ests. Governments, it is held, are in each case re-
sponsible to their own constituents for the preser-
vation of the safety and well-being of the nations
intrusted to their care, and consequently they can-
not act with the freedom of a private person.
They may not, therefore, incontinently plunge
their people into war without reasons that involve
the national interests. Until there is a better or-
ganization of international relations, this condi-
tion must continue; but it is rapidly coming to be
perceived that, if civilization is not to suffer ship-
wreck, a better organization must be sought.
Before attempting to find a basis for a revision
of international relations it is necessary to consider
how intimately national interests have become as-
sociated with war. For a long time, all the in-
terests of the state were regarded as personal to
the sovereign. All its territory was his territory.
All the property of the nation was his property,
of which the people enjoyed only the usufruct.
Even their persons and their lives were at his dis-
24 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
posal, for they were in all respects his subjects.
To-day the identity of the sovereign is changed,
but not the conception of sovereignty. The peo-
ple, standing in the place of the sovereign, claim
the right of succession to all the royal preroga-
tives. The national interests have become their
interests. The appeal to their patriotism rests
upon this ground. The power, gain, and glory
of the state are represented to be theirs. Even
where it has not entirely superseded the monarch,
the nation believes itself to have entered into part-
nership with him, and the people consider them-
selves shareholders in the vast enterprise of ex-
panding dominion. Even the beggar in the street
is assured that it is his country; and, though
ragged and hungry, he takes a pride in his pro-
prietorship.
It is the nation's territory, industry, commerce,
and prestige that are now in question. And gov-
ernment, even the government of the people, is no
longer merely protective. It enters into every
kind of business, owns railways, steamship lines,
manufactories, everything involving the life and
prosperity of the people. The state has become
an economic as well as a political organ of society.
EUROPE'S HERITAGE OF EVIL 25
The modern national state is, in fact, a stupend-
ous and autonomous business corporation, the
most portentous and the most lawless business
trust, and views other nations as its business
rivals, aiming at the control of foreign markets,
and of the sources of raw materials wherever
they may exist. And these vast economic entities,
with their vision fixed on gain, combine not only
the command of armies and navies, but absolute
freedom from effective legal restriction with im-
mensely concentrated wealth such as the kings
and emperors of the past never had at their dis-
posal.
Whatever, from an internal and social point of
view, the merits or defects of the extension of state
functions may be, they are bristling with possi-
bilities of war, and when modern nations engage
in it, it is no longer a dynastic adventure, but a
people's war. Commanding the strength and re-
sources of a whole people, and acting for its al-
leged interests, these great economic corporations
are fitted for aggression as well as for defense.
If they were subject to the usual laws of business
that prevail in the regulation of private enter-
prises within their own borders, in accordance
26 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
with the principles they apply at home, these
mailed and armed knights of trade might not be
dangerous to the world's peace; but they are not
subject to these, or to any such regulations. They
recognize no law which they feel themselves
obliged to obey. Inheriting by tradition from the
past alleged rights of absolute sovereignty, and
equipped with military forces on land and sea,
they are engaged in a struggle for supremacy
which they would not for a moment permit within
their own legal jurisdiction. Were a similar or-
ganization formed within their own borders,
adopting as its principles of action the privileges
usually claimed by sovereign states, it would be
promptly and ruthlessly suppressed as a danger-
ous outlaw.
This statement implies no reflection upon any
particular nation, for all to some extent share in
the responsibility. What is here condemned as
essentially unsocial and anarchic is the indiffer-
ence of these great national economic corporations
to one another's rights, and above all the absence
in the law of nations, as it is now understood, of
accepted regulations such as the lesser constituent
elements of the business world are required by
EUROPE'S HERITAGE OF EVIL 27
these very states to obey under their authority. If
civilization is to endure, and nations are not to
become privileged highway robbers on the land
and pirates on the sea, this part of the law of na-
tions must be revised not only as respects the
rules of war, but the rules of peace. In so far as
a nation is a business entity it should be governed
by the same principles in its dealings with other
nations as civilized states apply to business within
their own limits. But international law has not
yet reached the stage of formal development where
this is recognized. It is still under the influence
of the inherited customs of the past, the baneful
fiction of an absolute sovereign prerogative. Just
as Christendom found that it was not in fact so
organized as to restrain the Hun and the Tartar,
so we are discovering that civilization is not yet
so organized as to restrain their modern counter-
parts. So long as international business is con-
trolled by an absolute conception of sovereignty,
and sustained by military force, there will be no
prospect of either peace or equity in the world.
Let us not here undertake to speak of remedies.
We must first comprehend the nature of the situ-
28 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
ation. Nor should we here attempt to apportion
blame, which would only end in bitter controversy.
If the evil is in the system, then it is the system
that must be changed; and it will be time enough
to inquire how to change it and to pronounce
specific condemnations when we know what
change is required and who may refuse to par-
ticipate in making it.
Undoubtedly, we have all of us been cherishing
illusions. Let us, then, endeavor to dissipate
them.
We have assumed that in some mystical manner
progress is inherent in society ; that it is necessarily
produced by natural laws ; that the mere duration
of time carries us forward to perfection ; and that
the older civilization becomes, the wiser it tends
to be. Trusting to these baseless generalities, we
have in a spirit of optimism forgotten that we have
duties to perform, renunciations to make, and
sacrifices to offer if the state, or the so-called
society of states, is to prosper. We have formed
the habit of looking to the state as a source of
personal benefit to ourselves, which calls for only
the smallest contributions from us in return. We
have made exorbitant demands upon it, as undis-
EUROPE'S HERITAGE OF EVIL 29
ciplined children extort privileges from over-in-
dulgent parents. We have wanted better wages,
better prices for our commodities, better oppor-
tunities of trade, better conditions of life, free
schools, free books, playgrounds, public provi-
sions of every kind at the expense of the state. In
order to obtain these benefits, some have desired
that the state should become omnipotent, seeking
to augment its resources by despoiling the rich
within its limits, and exploiting or even conquer-
ing foreign territory wrested from other peoples,
in the belief that this would render it easier to
satisfy their desires, and through its increased
power become the dispenser of happiness. When
for this purpose armies and navies have been re-
quired, it has usually been easy to obtain them;
for may not the state, being a sovereign power,
do all things necessary for its own interest?
Thus men's consciences have been put to rest.
This tendency of modern states and the sudden
revelation of its meaning have been forcibly ex-
pressed by a recent writer. He says:
A few more teasings, a few more pistols held at the
head of the state, and a scheme, we were expecting, would
be forthcoming that would render us all happy in spite
30 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
of ourselves. Then, one fine morning in August, there
came a rude awakening. We got a message from the
state couched in language we had never heard before. "I
require you," said the state, "to place your property and
your lives at my service. Now, and for some time to
come, I give nothing, but ask for everything. Arm your-
selves for my defense. Give me your sons, and be will-
ing that they should die for me. Repay what you owe
me. My turn has come."
And thus Europe is now called upon to pay the
debt its theory of the state and of the state's om-
nipotence has incurred.
We have also trusted blindly to the process of
social evolution. Industrialism and commerce,
we have assumed, will automatically bring in a
new era. Before it militarism, the grim relic of
the old regime, will disappear. There will soon
be no need for fighting. When all the world
turns to industry, as it will, wars will cease.
Commerce will cement the nations together and
create a perfect solidarity of interests.
But the present war has thrown a new light
on the relations of militarism and industry.
Forty years ago, Herbert Spencer, with his strong
proclivity for brilliant generalization, fancied
that the age of militarism was soon to be super-
EUROPE'S HERITAGE OF EVIL 31
seded by an age of universal industrialism. He
described their opposite polities, the conditions of
the gradual transition, and the final triumph of
industry over militancy. But what do we now
behold? Has militarism diminished with the
growth of industry? Has not militarism simply
become more titanic and even more demoniacal by
the aid of industry, until war has become the most
stupendous problem of modern mechanics? And
now we see militarism wholly absorbing industry,
claiming all its resources, and even organizing
and commanding it.
And why is this? It is because the state as a
business corporation is employing military force
as its advance agent, struggling for the control of
markets and resources, and the command of new
peoples who are to feed and move the awful en-
ginery of war.
And this condition of the world is the logical
outcome of the inherited theory of the state. This
fact is now beginning to be recognized, and re-
cently there has been much said regarding impe-
rialism and democracy, often assuming that the
mere internal form of government alone is re-
sponsible for the international situation in Eu-
32 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
rope. But it is not the form, it is the spirit, and
above all the postulates, of government that are
at fault. If democracies may act according to
their "good pleasure," if the mere power of ma-
jorities is to rule without restraint, if there are
no Sacred and controlling principles of action, in
what respect is a multiple sovereign superior to a
single autocrat? If the private greed of a people
is sustained by the pretensions of absolutism in
international affairs, democracy itself becomes im-
perial, without accepting the principles of equity
which have sometimes given dignity to the im-
perial idea. In truth, the most dangerous con-
ceivable enemy to peace and justice would ,be a
group of competitive democracies delirious with
unsatisfied desires.
If there is to be a new Europe, it must not look
for new forms of organization so much as for a
new spirit of action. It must renounce altogether
its evil heritage. It must reconstruct its theory
of the state as an absolute autonomous entity.
If the state continues to be a business corporation,
as it probably in some sense will, then it must
abandon the conception of sovereignty as an un-
EUROPE'S HERITAGE OF EVIL 33
limited right to act in any way it pleases under
the cover of national interests and necessity. It
must consent to be governed by ethical principles.
It must not demand something for nothing, it must
not make its power the measure of its action, it
must not put its interests above its obligations.
It may plead them, it may argue them, and it may
use its business advantages justly to enforce them ;
but it may not threaten the life or appropriate the
property of its neighbors or insist upon controlling
them on its own terms. It may display its wares,
proclaim their excellence, fix its own prices, buy
and sell where it finds its advantage ; but it must
not bring to bear a machine-gun as a means of
persuasion upon its rival across the street.
No one can make a thorough and impartial in-
quiry into the causes of the present European
conflict without perceiving that their roots run
deep into the soil of trade rivalry. Beneath the
apparent political antagonisms are the economic
aspirations that have produced them. In the
light of history we can no longer accept the doc-
trine that industrialism and commercialism by a
process of natural evolution automatically super-
sede militarism. On the contrary, we perceive
34 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
that militarism on the one hand, and industry
and commerce on the other, are at present part-
ners rather than antagonists. They are differ-
ent, but closely associated, activities of modern
business policy as conducted by the state. If
there were no economic questions involved, the
conflict of nationalities could soon be ended.
Modern wars are primarily trade wars. Modern
armies and navies are not maintained for the
purpose of ruthlessly taking human life or of
covering rulers with glory. They are, on the one
hand, armed guardians. of economic advantages
already possessed; and, on the other, agents of
intended future depredation, gradually organ-
ized for purposes alleged to be innocent, and at
what is esteemed the auspicious moment des-
patched upon their mission of aggression. In-
ternational misunderstandings are readily ad-
justed where there is the will to adjust them ; but
against the deliberately formed policies of na-
tional business expansion — the reaching out for
new territory, increased population, war indem-
nities, coaling stations, trade monopolies, control
of markets, supplies of raw materials, and advan-
tageous treaty privileges, to be procured under the
EUROPE'S HERITAGE OF EVIL 35
shadow of the sword — there is no defense except
the power to thwart or obstruct them by armed
resistance.
We must, then, definitely abandon the thesis
that industrialism is essentially pacific, and will
eventually automatically disband armies and
navies, and thus put an end to war. On the con-
trary, modern armies and navies are the result
of trade rivalry, and are justified to those who
support them on the ground that there are na-
tional interests to be defended or advantages to be
attained by their existence. So long as even one
powerful nation retains its heritage of evil and in-
sists that it may employ its armies or navies ag-
gressively as an agency in its national business;
so long, to put the matter directly, as the nations
must buy and sell, travel and exchange, negotiate
and deliver, with bayonets at their breasts, so
long defensive armies and navies will be neces-
sary, and the battle for civilization must go on.
Strange as it may seem, it is not the poorest
nations, but the richest, where discontent is deep-
est and most widespread. It is the great powers
that are most inclined to war, and are most fully
prepared to make it; and the reason is not dim-
36 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
cult to discern. The greater the state the greater
its ambitions. It is easily within the grasp of
five or six great powers to secure the permanent
peace of the world, and, far more important than
that, to secure the observance of just laws by all
nations. But, unfortunately, governments, feel-
ing themselves charged with the duty of augment-
ing the resources of the state, find no limit to their
ambitions except in their powers of action, which
are great. The whole future of the world has in
the past virtually lain in the hands of a small
number of men, not all of them monarchs, but the
recognized leaders of public thought and action
in their respective nations.
This order of things is less likely to continue
in the future than at any time in the past. Far
less frequently than in former times will individ-
ual men shape the destinies of nations. And this
is an important augury for the new Europe.
Only a few men, and they but temporarily, framed
and executed the policies that have, for example,
created the British Empire. As the historian
Seeley said, "We have conquered half the world
in a fit of absence of mind." And in all this
process the British people have never been con-
EUROPE'S HERITAGE OF EVIL 37
suited, just as the German people were not con-
sulted in the two critical moments of their exist-
ence; for in the past peoples were seldom con-
sulted regarding their national destiny. But that
time has passed forever. Henceforth no intelli-
gent people will ever be led into the shambles of
aggressive warfare without being consulted.
That is the first mark of difference that will
distinguish the new Europe from the old. And,
being consulted, will they not ask with increas-
ing earnestness why nations cannot conduct their
business as the state generally requires private
business to be conducted, in accordance with
reasonable rules of procedure? Many negative
answers will, no doubt, be given, for governments
are tenacious of their traditions ; but, nevertheless,
there will be a general revision of the inherited
conception of the nature of the state, and a percep-
tion that world dominion is not the prerogative of
any single nation. States, like individual men,
must admit their responsibilities to one another,
accept the obligation to obey just and equal laws
and take their respective places in the society of
states in a spirit of loyalty to civilization as a
human and not an exclusively national ideal.
CHAPTER II
INTERNATIONAL IDEALS
DESPITE the heritage of evil in the absolute
conception of the state and the relations be-
tween states ; and, in truth, on account of it, men
of reflective habits of mind have devoted much at-
tention to the ideas that ought to prevail when,
either in the course of progressive evolution or at
some critical period of readjustment, the oppor-
tunity for amelioration may exist.
At the very outset, however, we are confronted
with the question how far the thought and pur-
pose of man can affect such vast issues as social,
political, and international organization. Judg-
ing by the past, we should, perhaps, be led to con-
clude, that mere theories have, on the whole, very
little to do with the mass action of mankind, and
that such action is almost universally determined
by the blind instincts and irresistible appetites of
men rather than by reason; with the result that
it is useless to expect that anything of national
38
INTERNATIONAL IDEALS 39
magnitude will happen simply because it is rea-
sonable or that international affairs will ever cease
to be more unreasonable than they have been in
the past.
If there were no important change in the human
units that make up the populations of what we
call the civilized nations of the world, this hope-
less prospect might be justified; but, in fact, a
very radical change has occurred in these later
decades. It consists in an ever-widening com-
mon consciousness regarding national and inter-
national affairs. Great world events, portrayed
in terms generally intelligible, and brought home
to the masses of mankind everywhere, have awak-
ened the intelligence of the common man as it has
never been aroused before. In the humblest
walks of life men are now discussing difficult
questions of jurisprudence and diplomacy in the
light of stirring events of world-wide significance,
and they are asking one another, What is to be-
come of civilization? Will it perish in the con-
flict of national interests, or will it enter upon a
new era of development?
Justice, peace, cooperation, culture — all these
seem to be imperiled by national antagonisms;
40 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
and yet they are aspirations that all nations pro-
fess to entertain. How may they be realized?
By intelligent organization, no doubt; but it must
be of a more thorough kind and on a larger scale
than has ever before been attempted. It cannot
stop at the national boundaries; it must include
the whole family of man.
The tragic character of the present world-con-
flict has greatly stimulated thought in this direc-
tion, but no plan of international organization has
thus far been proposed which has met with uni-
versal approbation as likely to prove practicable.
It is an easy task to outline an international con-
stitution based upon the principle of federation;
but all schemes of this kind when applied to prac-
tice are confronted with the pretensions of abso-
lute sovereignty, and the indisposition on the part
of governments to surrender any of their prerog-
atives.
Before great progress can be made in harmon-
izing national interests it will be necessary to re-
consider, in the light of modern knowledge and
experience, the true nature of the state and by a
readjustment of opinions upon that subject pre-
INTERNATIONAL IDEALS 41
pare the way for a change in the attitude of na-
tions toward one another.
The present is an unusually auspicious moment
for reflection upon this subject, for in the sanguin-
ary drama now enacting we are witnessing the
demonstration of the utter impracticability of real-
izing any of the international ideals if nations,
having become economic corporations, are to con-
tend with one another for the possession of the
earth upon the assumption that superior military
power is the source of rightful authority.
In so far as that idea is merely a historical in-
heritance coming down to us through the tacit ac-
ceptance of unfounded pretentions, we may very
readily abandon it, as marking a stage of social
evolution which we have left behind us. But
the case is not so simple. We find that all in-
ternational ideals are openly challenged and re-
pudiated. We are told that, rightly conceived,
the state is incapable of compromise; that it is a
vehicle of authority and of culture that cannot,
even if it would, refuse to execute its lofty mission
of expansion and transformation.
The truth is that the battle between opposing
theories of the state has not yet been fought out.
42 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
What is the purpose of the state? Does it exist
for the individual person, as democracy contends,
or does the individual person exist for the state,
as absolutism asserts ?
Deep down beneath all the superficial drift of
international questions is a problem in philoso-
phy, upon the solution of which there is so far no
agreement.
As a question of philosophy the opposing types
of conception regarding the nature of the state
may, perhaps, be best illustrated by comparing the
theories of Kant and Hegel, the one emphasizing
the freedom, development, and responsibility of
the individual man, the other the power, the glory,
and the divinity of the state.
At the end of the eighteenth century the idea
of dynastic proprietorship was already vanishing,
and the revolutionary movement, begun in Amer-
ica and continued in France and throughout Eu-
rope, demanded a reconstruction of the idea of
government. At that time the pretensions of royal
absolutism were challenged as they had never
been before. Then followed an effort at recon-
struction, and, more than any other of that gen-
eration, Immanuel Kant attempted to show that
INTERNATIONAL IDEALS 43
there is a truly philosophic foundation for the ex-
istence and authority of the state as a human in-
stitution.
It is Kant who best marks the transition to
distinctively modern thought not only on account
of his having lived in the period of revolt against
absolutism, but on account of the place he assigns
to man as a factor in history. To his mind the
great necessity for man is freedom. All the forces
of humanity are locked up in the possibilities of
the individual being. The great problem of so-
ciety is to release the free activity of human fac-
ulties. No one had ever so fully realized the in-
herent dignity of personality, or urged so strongly
its extrication from the mechanism of dynamic
process. The authority that should govern per-
sons, he thinks, should not come from without,
either from nature on the one hand or the state
on the other. The reason for the state is to be
found in the nature of man as a self-determining,
rational, and responsible being. Personality is
not a means to an end ; it is an end in itself, and
therefore should not be treated as a mere thing,
or made the creature, the instrument, or the vic-
tim of arbitrary force.
44 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
Government, then, should be organized for hu-
man service and not merely for the service of a
class to the detriment of another class, but for
society as a whole. It must, no doubt, be terri-
torial, and therefore circumscribed in its jurisdic-
tion; that is, there may be, and in fact must be,
many governments but they should all have the
same purpose. The state in its proper sense is a
structure of moral order, the creation of self-
conscious reason, aiming at the establishment of
an external support of human rights by an out-
ward defense of an inner principle. It is to be
sharply distinguished from society, which is a nat-
ural product. In its perfection it would be the
external harmony of the activities resulting from
personal freedom. The business of government,
therefore, is to remove the hindrances to freedom,
which are found in the love of power, of glory,
and of gain, motives engendered by the natural
instincts which man shares with the lower
animals.
Such a conception appears at first sight to be
not only cosmopolitan, but anti-national. Cos-
mopolitan it undoubtedly is, and therein lies the
possibility of ultimately realizing the idea of a
INTERNATIONAL IDEALS 45
true society of states; but it is not anti-national
in the sense of denying the value and necessity
of the nation. What it aims at is the extension
of local order until it becomes general order, by
so conceiving the state as to allow of its coopera-
tion with other states, either by federation, or
some other correlation, with the purpose of insur-
ing universal harmony and, therefore, permanent
peace.
But in order to reach this result Kant holds that
the "holy and inviolable law of reason" must tri-
umph over the impulses of the natural man not
by military force, for freedom and violence are
incompatible, but by the gradual evolution of
mankind through the action of rational intelli-
gence.
Here is presented, no doubt, a conception of
the state which renders internationalism possible
without the destruction of nationalism. But we
find in Kant only the beginning of a complete po-
litical philosophy, for the reason that he had not
seen his own idea of personality as the basis of
political organization anywhere effectively worked
out. He had not witnessed the development of
constitutionalism, which was only just asserting
46 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
itself, and his conservative spirit in matters prac-
tical was rudely shocked by the enormities of the
French Revolution. Yet he perceived that it was
upon the inherent rights of the individual man
that the state must be founded if despotism was
to be abolished. But he also apprehended the
deeper truth that rights without duties cannot be
sustained, and he therefore laid the principal
stress upon duty — duty to the state and duty to
all mankind.
"While Kant's conception of the state was mak-
ing practical progress in other parts of the world,
his Fatherland was harried by invasion, subju-
gated by conquest, and in the Napoleonic domina-
tion a new imperialism was holding all conti-
nental Europe in its grasp. Fichte applied the
Kantian conception of duty to the fallen fortunes
of the Prussian state, for a strong doctrine of
nationalism became the necessity of the hour.
But it was Hegel, after liberation had been
achieved, who, determined to philosophize every-
thing, made the state the shrine of the indwelling
absolute, and for the cosmopolitanism of Kant
was substituted a theory of the state which pro-
claimed it an organ of divine action, identified
INTERNATIONAL IDEALS 47
patriotism with religion, and rendered the separ-
ate nationalities as unapproachable for purposes
of rational understanding as the planets in the
solar system.
For Hegel the individual man is nothing in
himself. Whatever he has of moral personality
is the creation of the state. It is true that in his
writings Hegel begins with personal conscious-
ness as a fundamental fact in the manner of
Kant ; but in his fully developed philosophy, after
he has assumed the task of glorifying the state,
he makes of it the only vehicle through which
the absolute reaches humanity, and he always
means by it the Prussian state, — the Prussian
state, as Haym has said, as it existed in 1821,
when Hegel wrote.
But this was a necessary corollary of Hegel's
conception of history as immanent reason. It was
idle, he thought, to speak of what a state "ought
to be." Being an incarnation of the absolute,
it is what it is, and cannot be other than it is. It
is right in all it does. All changes are divine
acts. The individual man must take his orders
from the state, because it alone has the right to
command. The state being an embodiment of
48 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
the absolute, it is foolish to try to make constitu-
tions, as if we had any right of choice. Parlia-
ments are only mediating bodies, which should
take their directions from the permanent ruler
in order to enlighten the masses as to how they
are to execute these orders. The state is an or-
ganism in which every constituent part is sub-
ject to the will of the whole. But as this unity
is not found in society as a whole, it must be
sought in the will of a dominant person, the mon-
arch, through whom the absolute speaks. And
thus the philosopher sinks at last into the syco-
phant, crowning his system with the dogma of
divine right, and ending with the adulation of a
notoriously weak and reactionary king.
Evidently, if all states are like this, — and this is
intended as a theory of the state in the abstract, —
there can be no restraint upon the purpose of the
monarch. He is absolute, and all states are
absolute. There being no law but their own will,
there can be no such thing as international law;
and, as the state's omnipotence includes the un-
limited right of making war at the will of the
sovereign, there cannot be a permanent peace.
Such a condition is an "empty dream." It is
INTERNATIONAL IDEALS 49
through war that the absolute carries forward the
work of history.
Almost with unanimity, after being for a time
under the spell of Hegel's speculations, some
decades ago philosophers abandoned absolutism,
and raised the cry, "Back to Kant!" In the
philosophy of the state, however, Hegel still ex-
erts an influence. The picture of it as a self-
subsisting and dominant power serves well the de-
signs of imperial ambition. Religion, war, and
further domination all seem to be reconciled by
the assertion that the individual man exists for
the state, and that the state is not founded on the
rights of the individual man.
Hence there is to-day a contest between these
opposing conceptions — a contest upon the decision
of which the future of international relations
throughout the world will depend. If, as Kant's
theory assumes, law is the formulation of justice
and equity, resulting from a consensus of social
needs interpreted in the light of reason, of which
the state is an expression, then there is law for
states as well as for individual men. If, on the
contrary, law is a sovereign decree emanating
from a dominant will regardless of limitations,
50 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
there can be no law for states until such a supe-
rior will is established over them.
Both ideas have been worked out in the devel-
opment of modern states. Some have followed
the absolutist theory even in their internal or-
ganization; and in these authority without re-
striction emanates from a superior, an individual
ruler or a governing class. In others authority
proceeds from the constituents of the state under
definite forms of limitation, in which checks upon
the pretensions of absolute sovereignty are embod-
ied in the very structure of government. None
but states of the latter kind are truly constitu-
tional. They are by their very nature creations
of law. They recognize the fact that whatever
rightful authority there is in the world is derived
from claims to justice antecedent to all legislation
and inherent in personality. When all the re-
sources of sophistry have been exhausted in try-
ing to derive rights from power, — that is, to prove
that might is right, — we shall be obliged to go
back to Kant and admit that human personality
as such is a source of claims to justice and equity,
or we must confess that right and wrong are
INTERNATIONAL IDEALS 51
merely imaginary distinctions, and jurisprudence
a system of purely mechanical ideas,
It has been said that all men may have "inter-
ests," but no one has any "rights" until govern-
ment has accorded them by an act of legislation.
In some technical sense this may be true, but in a
broad human sense it is not true. If it were true,
it would be absurd to fight for another man's
rights. But all the progress the world has ever
made, all that distinguishes civilization from bar-
barism, springs from someone's sense of duty,
which means simply the recognition of another
man's right, and this is as real when it is denied
as when it is conceded.
Certainly these inherent rights do not belong to
human beings in an isolated and non-social state,
for men never existed in a non-social state. All
men are members of a series and members of a
group, and it is in these relations that they recog-
nize their claims to justice and to equity, which
remain the same whether they are granted or not.
Thus the idea of law is a part of the mental
furniture of every being capable of an act of re-
flection. To say with Hegel — or with Austin, or
with any legal positivist — that there is and can
52 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
be no international law, because there is no in-
ternational sovereign to decree it, is to define law
by a mere accident and not by its essential nature,
that is, by the fact that laws have sometimes, but
certainly not generally, been issued as sovereign
decrees.
It is singular how this notion lingers. A
modern disciple of Hegel, for example, argues
thus:
The whole of international law rests on the principle
that treaties are to be observed. But behind all this there
is the sheer fact of the separate individual Powers, each
absolute in its limited area; so that, at bottom, the whole
fabric of international rules and customs is just an agree-
ment of separate wills, and not an expression of a single
general will.
And he sees in this a reason why leagues and
federations cannot have the quality of law, forget-
ful of the fact that in all modern constitutional
states every law of every legislative body is a re-
sult arrived at by an agreement of separate wills
expressed in the votes of the legislators. But if
the separate wills of a congress or a parliament
may formulate a law, why may not separate and
independent states formulate a law for the gov-
INTERNATIONAL IDEALS 53
ernment of their own conduct? And having
pledged themselves to it, being law in the most
perfect sense, are they not bound by it?
There is, it must be admitted, an ineffaceable
distinction between the nature of a state, even a
constitutional state, and a human being. The
state is the guardian of private rights and inter-
ests. It acts for its constituents in a fiduciary
capacity. It is, indeed, an "ark of safety" to
which communities of men have committed the
keeping of their lives and treasures on the troubled
waters of an uncharted world. "It is the vehicle
which carries the whole value of life." Further-
more, it exists in a world of hostile forces.
"In the world, right can only prevail through
might." Therefore the state must be strong,
and to be strong it must be armed, as the indi-
vidual man under the protection of the state
need not be. How otherwise can it fulfil its
sacred trust?
All this is true and of the first importance; but,
while it justifies the possession of force by the
state, it makes it very plain that the strength
of the state is not an end in itself, but merely a
means — an instrument for the protection of rights
54 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
and interests intrusted to its care. The end of the
state is, therefore, not aggression, or profit, or
power, but justice. The primary reason for the
existence of a government is that each citizen shall
be protected in his rights.
It is this that distinguishes the state from other
forms of human association. Its function is
primarily protective. Upon this foundation rest
all its special and peculiar prerogatives. Here is
the reason for its authority, but this is limited
by the reason for its existence. Society has mani-
fold functions, but they may be normally left to in-
dividual and corporate enterprise within the
state, which may be a complete and perfect "body
politic" without them. On the other hand, these
functions may be in part, and even to a great
extent, taken over and performed by the state,
but they are not necessary to its existence. They
do, however, modify its character. When the
state, in addition to its protective function, as-
sumes those of industry, transportation, and com-
merce, as the modern state sometimes does, it un-
dergoes a radical transformation. It itself then
becomes a business corporation, a rival, and a
competitor in the world of trade.
INTERNATIONAL IDEALS 55
Now what is most important to consider is that,
while this expansion of its functions profoundly
changes the character of the state, it does not con-
fer upon it any new authority. It does multiply
and extend its interests, but it does not in any
respect render the state absolute or endow it with
unlimited right of command. Mere business can-
not be regarded as a source of absolute sover-
eignty.
For constitutional states, therefore, — that is,
for governments based upon the protection of
human rights, and not upon some superhuman
claim to authority, like that of the divine right of
the monarch, — there is no logical ground for
claiming sovereign rights in the absolutist sense.
Such states are free and independent, but they
do not represent the will to power. They repre-
sent and embody the will to justice ; and the prin-
ciples of justice are, ipso facto, their law of action.
Everything violative of justice is for them usur-
pation. They may commit acts of injustice, they
may explain them, they may excuse them; but
they cannot logically justify them. As an organ
of justice the state exceeds its prerogatives when
it is unjust.
56 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
Undoubtedly this implies that international law
is self-subsistent. For constitutional states it ex-
ists regardless of customs and conventions, and
would be their law if no customs or conventions
had ever existed, for its principles enter into their
very purpose and structure. For them to deny
these principles in their conduct would be to de-
nature themselves.
Written or unwritten, international law is ac-
cepted by all constitutional states as binding upon
them. By some, as in the United States, it is ex-
pressly declared to be a part of the law of the land.
Acceptance of it should be the condition of the
recognition of a government; for in so far as a
community of men does not admit its existence, it
is not a state in any defensible sense. An aggre-
gation of de facto forces it may be, but in so far
as it is merely an embodiment of the will to power
and not the will to justice, it falls below statehood
and is merely a predatory band, an outlaw that
deserves to be proscribed and refused a place in
the society of states.
In practice the specific rules of international
law are established by a general consensus. They
are sometimes inferred from custom and some-
INTERNATIONAL IDEALS 57
times defined in conventions; but these rules are
admitted to be merely partial and tentative ef-
forts to express in definite formulae what justice
and equity demand. In this respect international
law is comparable with science. As the man of
science is engaged in a continuous effort to dis-
cover and state truth, so the jurist and the states-
man, in so far as they are really such, persistently
seek to formulate the requirements of justice. In
both cases the formulas arrived at may be plainly
incomplete; but justice, like truth, is not a
mere creation of the mind. It is an object of
research and discovery; and as far as it is dis-
covered and agreed upon it is obligatory, al-
though our knowledge of it may still be incom-
plete.
It is, therefore, a solecism to speak of interna-
tional law as "destroyed" or "non-existent," be-
cause it is sometimes violated. It can never be
destroyed. It will continue to reassert itself; and,
as public order and state authority appear more
necessary after a period of domestic anarchy than
they ever did before, international law, after an
orgy of violence and atrocity, appeals with new
strength to the reason of mankind as something
58 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
that possesses an inherent claim upon our re-
spect and obedience.
Although criminally violated, it is an error
to suppose that international law has been wholly
disregarded in the great European conflict. On
the contrary, it has been recognized and appealed
to as never before in human history. Never in
any previous war have such efforts been put
forth by belligerents to justify their own conduct,
and to prove that their enemies have openly dis-
regarded the principles of justice as well as the
merely technical rules of warfare. The volumi-
nous white, red, yellow, and other books published
by the governments are eloquent tributes to the
authority of international law, which they con-
stantly accuse their enemies of violating, and
profess to appeal to as a body of rules that ought
to be obeyed. In truth, the approval and dis-
approval of their acts by the neutral nations are
based almost entirely upon the conclusiveness or
inconclusiveness of the evidence that these accusa-
tions are true, and the weight of public condem-
nation corresponds with the preponderance of
guilt resulting from intentional disregard of the
principles of justice.
INTERNATIONAL IDEALS 59
How trivial it is, then, to speak of interna-
tional law as being of slight importance, and es-
pecially to treat it as if it had no claims to the
title of binding law because it does not have an
immediate external sanction ! An ultimate sanc-
tion it unquestionably has. If it were generally
disregarded, it would involve the complete ruin
of civilization. If, on the other hand, it were
generally obeyed, if all the great powers, not to
speak of the smaller ones, earnestly sought to
carry out in all their relations with one another
the principles for which they profess to stand, and
which they endeavor to enforce within their own
jurisdictions and demand that other governments
should observe in respect to themselves, it would
seem like a different world.
Is it then not idle to pretend that international
law has no sanction when obedience or disobedi-
ence of its precepts carries such far-reaching con-
sequences to mankind? In the present condi-
tion of the world, as the rain falls alike on the
just and on the unjust, even under municipal law
the victims of unprovoked aggression often suf-
fer while the guilty escape the penalty the state
would impose upon them; but we do not on this
60 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
account deny the existence of the law. Nor can
it be said that no penalty is attached to the viola-
tion of the law of nations. In general, besides
its direct consequence of resentment and hostility
on the part of the nation wronged, it should in-
volve the general reprobation of mankind. And,
in fact, the penalties for violations of interna-
tional law are far more specifically apportioned
and executed than we sometimes imagine. The
perpetration of injustice by one state upon another
invariably deteriorates its own citizenship and
destroys within the body politic itself values far
more precious than those obtained by an unjust
war. "A state," it has been well said, "can do
no wrong to another which is not equally, and
even more, a wrong to itself." Regarded from
a historical point of view, there are few projects
of international depredation that have not brought
terrific retributions; and, although law-abiding
states have sometimes been subjected to infam-
ous encroachments, it is a fact supported by sta-
tistics that many small and inoffensive states, like
Switzerland and Holland, demand lower taxes
and borrow money at lower rates of interest than
the imperial powers that have from time to time
INTERNATIONAL IDEALS 61
attempted to subjugate their neighbors, thereby
sowing dragon's teeth of reprisal and revenge
that exhaust populations and burden them with
public debt. The cost of overgrown armies and
navies and the far heavier cost of young life
offered as a sacrifice to national pride and na-
tional greed — are not these a penalty for dis-
regarding a law of life written in the reason and
the conscience of man?
What, then, is law, if not that principle of self-
regulation by which a being realizes the true end
of its existence? Our statements of it may vary
from time to time, for the perception of it de-
pends upon the development of our intelligence.
But it does not depend upon our will. It is in-
herent in our being. It is manifested through our
reason. It is confirmed through our experience.
There is a law of nations as well as a law of in-
dividual life, which we have only partly discov-
ered, because we have not sought the highest
good of all, but only the highest good of a limited
number. But nature deals in universals. So
long, therefore, as all nations, or even some na-
tions, insist upon a right of territorial expansion
at the expense of others; so long as they fail to
62 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
recognize that, irrespective of size and strength,
they are members of a community of jural equals ;
so long as they claim that their will is law, so
long war will be the ratio ultima, and prepara-
tion for it the highest wisdom of statesmanship.
If it is impossible to place confidence in leagues
of peace, it is still less possible to confide our
destinies to a league to enforce peace, if it is to
be composed of powers that need themselves to be
placed under guardians. The only league that
could be trusted effectually to enforce peace would,
be one composed exclusively of states that are
disposed to recognize the obligations of interna-
tional law, and voluntarily to pledge themselves to
protect and obey it.
But, to speak plainly, peace is not in itself a
human ideal. As long as it leaves unsolved the
problems of justice, it is not even a desirable as-
piration. It may even be repugnant to the moral
sentiments of an enlightened conscience. It is
to be desired only when it is the concomitant of
realized social good, for it is in no sense an end in
itself. Yet the word is not to be set aside as rep-
resenting a mere negation, as if it were simply the
INTERNATIONAL IDEALS 63
absence of strife. Peace on earth would mean the
liberation of human faculties for the highest and
noblest achievements of which human nature is
capable. It would mean a splendid efflorescence
of art, literature, science, philosophy, and religion,
in short, culture in its best sense, as the spon-
taneous unfolding of the powers of personality.
And when we consider what an absolutist state
might do to repress human spontaneity, destroy
the sense of personality, and render its own dog-
mas definitive, we see what an incubus upon civi-
lization it is capable of becoming. If the tend-
ency to monopolize and direct for its own purposes
all human energies in channels of its own devising
were unrestrained, we should eventually have an
official art, an official science, and an official
literature that would be like iron shackles to the
human mind.
These things, being human, are essentially cos-
mopolitan, and thrive best where international
intercourse is least restrained. If, as the absolut-
ist theory of the state assumes, a particular gov-
ernment did, in reality, embody the indwelling
absolute, the source and shaper of all intelligent
existence, as Hegel would have it, would it even
64 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
then have the right to dictate what language
should be employed, what arts should be encour-
aged, what forms they should take, and what
purposes they should serve? What a narrow
view it is to assume that any merely national
culture is a world culture or that it has a right to
impose itself upon recalcitrant peoples who have
a culture of their own! Such an assumption is
not only unphilosophical ; it is unhistorical.
"Culture is not, and never can be, an inherent
quality peculiar to a particular nation or lan-
guage. It is the heritage of the whole human
race, cherished, enriched, and transmitted by one
generation to another, from one corner of the
earth to another. Human languages are the ves-
sels in which culture resides. No language has
been a culture-language from the beginning, and
none is incapable of becoming such in the end."
Culture, in any true sense, cannot be made a na-
tional monopoly. It is an affair of the human
soul, and any vehicle of repression against which
the soul is in revolt is doomed to defeat, or cul-
ture will perish in the struggle.
Here speak with voices that cannot be silenced
and with pleadings that must be heard the sup-
INTERNATIONAL IDEALS 65
pressed nationalities, whole peoples smitten with
the sword, torn up from their historic roots, and
made to serve the narrow selfish purposes of
dominant dynasties. It is useless to speak of
peace while these enormities exist. How can peo-
ples who, through mere numerical superiority
and military power, have overwhelmed subject
races, and by the menace of the sword forbid the
use of native languages and the retention of his-
toric memories, speak seriously of superior cul-
ture? It is only by the power of persistence un-
der conditions of perfect liberty that the superior-
ity of a form of culture can vindicate itself, for
that is for each nation the highest which is best
suited to its powers of achievements; and when
a dynastic ruler by violence strips a subject race
of its spiritual inheritance, it reverses and de-
stroys the process by which true culture is de-
veloped. There is no people in the world who
would not resist it if this procedure were prac-
tised upon itself.
A people, therefore, cannot fit itself for inter-
national society or realize its own normal de-
velopment as a state until it is ready to recognize
the claims of personality. Where mixed races
66 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
compose the population, and nationality is iden-
tified with a dominant race, there can be no true
national unity, because there is no spirit of co-
operation. On the other hand, it has been shown
by the experience of Switzerland and the United
States that different races may coexist in the same
nation without in the slightest degree destroying
their personal freedom, and that they may co-
operate together successfully in the organization
of liberty. Many nations may still be unripe for
this higher development of nationality, and the
contests for race segregation and race domina-
tion may still continue; but the obstacle to har-
mony does not proceed from the essential nature
of the state. It consists rather in the arrest of
political evolution at a stage where true state-
hood has not yet been achieved; for a nation
organized merely for power, for conquest, for
world dominion, and not for justice, is not yet
a state in the proper meaning of the word, but
an unsocial and anarchical survival of primi-
tive despotism.
The complete realization of international
ideals must, therefore, wait on further political
evolution. But they are not wholly dependent
INTERNATIONAL IDEALS 67
on purely speculative thought. They are closely
intertwined with practical experience. They
gain new strength from every new disillusion-
ment regarding the value and expediency of
schemes of conquest and the effort to secure so-
cial prosperity by military force. We have,
therefore, to take into account existing realities.
No more than the old will the new Europe be
a mere structure of thought. It is materially
shaping itself now before our eyes. It is being
forged and fashioned amid the smoke and flame
and torture of battle. It is to be determined not
only by what men love and desire, but also by
what they hate and by what they recoil from in
horror. Its battle-cry is: "Never again!
Never again! " Thrones may be shaken or they
may endure; but out of the anguish, the disil-
lusionment, and the fading of iridescent dreams
the new Europe will come forth chastened, re-
constituted, and redeemed.
CHAPTER III
ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM
IN the discussion of international questions it
is a common oversight to lay the principal
stress on political organization, to the neglect of
economic facts and aspirations. It is evident
that if all nations were living under a truly con-
stitutional regime and were disposed to apply the
principles of constitutional states in their deal-
ings with one another, it would not be difficult to
establish a world organization with a settled code
of law, a court of arbitral justice, and perhaps a
council of conciliation to propose methods of ad-
justing controversies arising, from a conflict of
national policies. But such an organization
would provide only a set of institutions. It would
not reach the national motives that move the
world to action.
Among the causes of conflict the most diffi-
cult to control are the economic motives ; for it is
68
ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM 69
these that are at present the most influential in
determining the ambitions of nations, which are
not merely "bodies politic," but economic cor-
porations, seeking to acquire and possess the
resources of the world. Regarded from this
point of view, the external aim of national exist-
ence is efficiency rather than justice. Its pur-
pose is not alone the protection of rights, but
the augmentation of power. As long as the em-
ployment of military force as an auxiliary of in-
dustry and trade seems to the great powers more
advantageous than peaceable cooperation in the
utilization of the earth's resources, war will ap-
pear to be a natural, and to some a justifiable,
method of national development.
Modern imperialism is, in fact, far more ac-
tuated by economic than by political motives.
Politically, imperialism is merely a dynastic in-
terest; but economically, it is made to appear
that territorial expansion and extended domina-
tion are in the people's interest. ^In this repre-
sentation there are, however, two abuses of the
people's confidence : for, while a few special inter-
ests may profit by an imperial policy, the aver-
age person is not rendered richer or happier by
70 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
imperial triumphs; and, if he were, it would still
be a criminal act to seduce a people into partner-
ship in a policy of plunder on the ground that
advantages may be obtained for them through
the power of the state which could not be pro-
cured by private means. When a government
embarks upon a policy of imperial aggression,
it virtually says to the nation, "Provide us with
the necessary power, and we shall win for you in-
creased advantages in which you will all share."
A people thus deluded are the victims not only
of deception, but of corruption. By becoming
shareholders in a joint-stock operation, the ob-
ject of which is illicit gain, they furnish the cap-
ital for a predatory enterprise, only to discover in
the end that they do not share in its fruits even
when these are obtained by conquests and annexa-
tions. On the contrary, they find themselves
burdened with public debt, impoverished by the
neglect of their business, and saddened by the
loss of their sons killed or maimed in battle. It
may well be doubted if, when the balance is
struck, the average person in any nation, though
victorious in war, has on the whole been to any
important extent enriched by imperial aggres-
ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM 71
sion. New territory may have been obtained, new
accessions may have been made to the mass of
the population, wider political control may have
been acquired, but rarely, if ever, has the sum
of happiness been thus increased.
To most civilized peoples the thought of ag-
gressive war for purposes of gain, involving as
it necessarily does every variety of crime, — rob-
bery, murder, outrage, and sacrilege, — is revolt-
ing to the conscience and repellent to intelligence ;
but, in reality, imperial aspirations are never so
repulsively presented to the mind. They are in-
variably disguised for the great mass of the peo-
ple under a mask of virtuous pretenses. Alleged
defense against intended invasion, the undoing
of historic wrongs, the attainment of "natural
boundaries," the unification of divided peoples,
the restoration of suppressed nationalities, the ex-
tension of the benefits of a higher culture to
lower races — all these are the reasons set forth
in public proclamations and diplomatic apologies
for schemes of aggression, while the advantages
to be gained are represented as incidental con-
comitants of these lofty purposes.
It would, of course, be unreasonable to deny
72 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
that long-obstructed national aspirations and a
desire for equality of privilege with other nations
may be perfectly legitimate, as for example, the
unification of Germany and of Italy, or a deter-
mination to put an end to exclusion from markets
and waterways over which unfair monopolies
have been established. In cases where whole
peoples have by force been rendered economically
dependent there may be, no doubt, just grounds
for demanding changes ; but in the main these are
fit subjects for negotiation and transaction, in
accordance with legitimate business methods,
rather than for the exercise of military force. In
the past, resort to violence for the attainment of
national ends has not only been customary, but
it has seemed to follow as a logical corollary from
the absolutist theory of the state. If that theory
is still to be maintained, then there is no escape
from the perfect legitimacy of wholesale con-
quest, limited only by the power of a state to
attain its ends by force. Every existing empire
in the world has, in fact, been created by mili-
tary power. To those who accept the absolutist
theory of the state there is nothing reprehensible
in the spirit of conquest and imperial domination.
ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM 73
Why should any nation holding this theory re-
frain from extending its power as far as possi-
ble? It is, in truth, certain that it will not re-
frain; and it follows with logical necessity that
as long as this theory is held the conflict of nations
will continue.
The whole future of civilization turns upon
the decision whether the state is to be henceforth
a creation of force or a creation of law. If it is
to be considered merely a creation of force, then
preparation for war is the only wisdom; for only
the strong state can survive, and it must be at all
times ready to fight for its existence. But if, on
the other hand, the state is rightly to be con-
ceived as a creation of law, then all states ac-
cepting this theory are menaced by the existence
of strong embodiments of power which refuse
to be governed by the rules of law. As long as
they exist, as long as they arm themselves for ag-
gression, as long as they devise and entertain
schemes of conquest, so long the truly constitu-
tional states must be prepared to defend them-
selves and even to defend one another.
Considered by itself, merely dynastic impe-
rialism is not at present a menace to the world's
74 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
peace. There is probably no nation so devoted to
a dynasty and to the dynastic conception of gov-
ernment as to endanger the peace of its neighbors
for purely dynastic reasons. Mankind has
passed that point. But territorial expansion, the
extension of political control for economic rea-
sons, the lust for markets, the quest for resources,
the command of great waterways, supremacy on
the sea — these are the driving and compelling
forces that make imperialism a terror in the
world. In the hands of an efficient, irresponsible,
and remorseless great power, these ambitions
would render this planet a place of unending tor-
ture to every law-respecting people.
It is an interesting fact that in the case of the
states of Europe which were at one time engaged
in a struggle for empire, but have since abandoned
it, there has been an impressive diminution in the
proportion of time during which they have been
occupied with war. Denmark, for example, dur-
ing the period of its struggle for supremacy in
the Baltic, in the sixteenth century devoted 32.5
years, and in the seventeenth century 30.5 years,
to war ; but in the eighteenth and nineteenth cen-
ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM 75
turies, when the kingdom had ceased to enter-
tain imperial ambitions, the average time de-
voted to war, in which it was involved chiefly
through its alliances, was only about 13 per cent,
of the whole period. In the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries, Sweden, while aiming to be the
seat of empire in the North by dominating Poland,
North Germany, and Denmark, was engaged in
war more than 50 per cent, of the time; but in
the nineteenth century after the Swedish impe-
rial ambitions had become extinct, although forced
into war in self-defense during the Napoleonic
period, warlike activities occupied only 6.5 per
cent, of the time, and since 1815 the kingdom has
been at peace. Holland, also, during the period
of colonial expansion was involved in war during
62 per cent, of the time, but in the last half cen-
tury has been exempt from warfare. Spain, in
the full tide of colonial expansion, was engaged
in war during 82 per cent, of the time; but in the
nineteenth century, with the exception of the
Napoleonic period, the wars of Spain, until the
short conflict with the United States over Cuba,
were mere domestic insurrections against abso-
lutism.
76 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
If now we turn to the great powers, we find
that they have been almost constantly engaged
in war or preparation for it and that it has grown
almost entirely out of their imperial aspirations.
Austria, in the period of imperial consolidation
from 1500 to 1650, was engaged in war 75.5 per
cent, of the entire time. After the Peace of West-
phalia there was a marked diminution of warlike
activities. During the eighteenth century the
proportion fell to 48 per cent., and in the nine-
teenth to 13.5 per cent. During the whole period
from 1100 down to the beginning of the nine-
teenth century France has been engaged in war
about one half the time, and during the last cen-
tury 35 per cent, of the time. During four cen-
turies Russia has been 60 per cent, of the time
occupied with war. Since 1500, England has
been involved nearly 52 per cent, of the time in
foreign wars.
Many of the wars included in these estimates
were, it is true, of an unimportant character, and
certainly no one of them, not even the Napoleonic
wars, could compare in magnitude with the great
European conflict now raging; but the greater
part of them were, on one side or the other, im-
ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM 77
perial wars, and proceeded upon the principle
that the right of possession belongs to the power
that can take and hold. There may have been
differences in the treatment of the vanquished
after the struggle was ended, and in the charac-
ter of the civilization imposed by the conqueror;
but in the past no great power has doubted that
it had a perfect right to subjugate a weaker race
or dismember a defenseless state whenever it was
to its material advantage to do so, and there is no
great power that has not acted in this way.
Down to the invasion of Belgium in 1914, the
most odious crime ever committed against a civi-
lized people was, no doubt, the first partition of
Poland; yet at the time not a voice was raised
against it. Louis XV was "infinitely displeased,"
but did not even reply to the King of Poland's
appeal for help. George III coolly answered that
"justice ought to be the invariable rule of sover-
eigns"; but concluded, "I fear, however, misfor-
tunes have reached the point where redress can
be had from the hand of the Almighty alone."
Catherine II thought justice satisfied when "every
one takes something." Frederick II wrote to his
brother, "The partition will unite the three re-
78 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
ligions, Greek, Catholic, and Calvinist; for we
would take our communion from the same conse-
crated body, which is Poland." Only Maria
Theresa felt a twinge of conscience. She took,
but she felt the shame of it. She wrote:
We have by our moderation and fidelity to our engage-
ments acquired the confidence, I may venture to say the
admiration, of Europe. . . . One year has lost it all. I
confess, it is difficult to endure it, and that nothing in the
world has cost me more than the loss of our good name.
It is a strange phenomenon that in matters
where the unsophisticated human conscience so
promptly pronounces judgment and spontane-
ously condemns, the solid mass of moral convic-
tion should count for nothing in affairs of state.
Against it a purely national prejudice has almost
never failed to prevail. 'At the present moment
there is a strong sympathy expressed for the mis-
fortunes of small states; and yet how little the
great powers have done to secure the safety and
the rights of the lesser nations. It may seem un-
gracious, in the midst of a bitter struggle, to
open the books of the past and recall to the con-
testants the record they have helped to make.
But how shall we ever put an end to economic
ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM 79
imperialism if we do not lay bare its vices and if
we do not condemn it in all who have practised
it? So long as it remains unchallenged, it will
go on. But the crime of letting it go on is not
confined to the injury inflicted upon the quarry
in the game of empire, the small state or the weak
people. The most fatal injury is to the imperial
peoples, who suffer themselves to be drawn into
predatory aggression and made particeps criminis
by the appeal to their racial instincts, their loyalty
to their governments, their passion for supremacy,
or the baser incentive of mere vulgar greed. If
there is to be a better spirit in the new Europe,
there will be required much penitence for the past
and many high resolves for the future. But there
are grounds for believing that a turning-point in
history has now been reached. It has required
the awful cataclysm that is now agitating Europe
to open the eyes of civilized peoples to the truth
that the state, with all its machinery of destruction,
cannot longer be set above the moral law. It
has at the same time raised the question in every
thoughtful mind, What is the state, and whence
comes its authority that for its own increase of
power it may so ruthlessly crush the lives of men
80 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
beneath its chariot wheel, hurling whole peoples
against each other, armed with every ingenious
device for wholesale murder, and strewing the
earth with death and mutilation? There is hope
in the fact that nations which in the past have
themselves joined in the quest for empire and
have taken part in the subjugation of helpless
peoples now assert that they are fighting the
battle of democracy and sacrificing their own lives
for the safety of small and defenseless states.
After that how can they ever again place empire
above moral obligation, and material gain above
the principles they proclaim?
It was, beyond dispute, economic imperialism
that caused the present war and plunged all Eu-
rope into it. No one can fail to see the opposi-
tion of interests that led up to it. They were
real, they were obvious; but it was an anachron-
ism to fight about them. They were primarily
business interests — markets, resources, trade
routes. These were the issues. To settle them
advantagously the sword was thrown into the
scale, great armies were mustered and despatched
upon their errand of hewing their way to the heart
of opposing nations. Has it been a good way
ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM 81
to transact business ? It was easy to begin it, but
it is difficult to end it. It can never be ended by
mere righting. The lesson of it must be learned
and accepted by all; and, whoever wins on the
battle-field, no real victory can be attained that
does not result in the triumph of principles of
universal justice, and the renunciation of material
advantages as mere spoils of war. Unless the
victory resulting from this war is a triumph for
humanity, whoever the victor may be at the mak-
ing of a treaty, it will not be a peace, but the seed
of future conflicts. The real battle-field is in
the souls of the nations ; and nations as well as in-
dividual men must learn that "he who conquer-
eth his own spirit is greater than he who taketh
a city."
Herein, then, lies the foreshadowing of a new
Europe, that, hereafter, the stronger may not
profit by his superior strength. It sounds, in-
deed, like a new doctrine, and it will be hard to
live by, but it has its apostolate. It is explicitly
announced as a creed. Whatever sympathy the
Entente Allies have received in America has been
given to them because they were the first to an-
82 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
nounce it, and because it is believed that they are
sincere in proclaiming that law is to be respected
and the right of the stronger is to be denied.
They have opened a great issue, and they will be
held to it. The small states, the weak peoples,
the submerged races, they affirm, must henceforth
receive from the powerful just consideration.
The state is no longer to be regarded as an entity
existing only for its own augmentation of power,
above the law, defiant of humanity, and respon-
sible to no one for its action. There is to be a
society of states in a true sense, in which interna-
tional law is to be respected. In brief, there is to
be an end of economic imperialism. It is to be
a different world.
For the historian, at least, it is difficult to ac-
cept these high resolutions as certain to endure.
History has never been an advance in a direct
line toward the fulfilment of great ideals. There
are frequently reactionary movements, but they
are seldom complete. Human nature does not
change radically, but in great crises men see a
new light; and, having seen it, it is never quite
so dark as it was before.
At all events, a new standard has been raised.
ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM 83
Let us, therefore, rally to it. Let us make it easy
to perform acts of penitence and contrition. Let
all who believe in the constitutional state, who
base it upon the rights of the person, who would
subject it as far as possible to moral law, and who
wish to banish from the earth the shadow of the
sword, unite in accepting this standard. At least
one step of progress has been made since the con-
ferences at The Hague. Then no one dared to
raise the deeper issues. No one in those conclaves
ventured to question the prerogatives of govern-
ment. No one felt that the moment had arrived
to discuss the real causes of war or to rebuke the
greed of the great powers. There was of neces-
sity an atmosphere of courtesy, but it was breathed
through a veil of mutual suspicion. The very
fact that there were subjects that could not be
frankly considered rendered impossible perfect
confidence. Again and again it was whispered,
"We must not isolate this or that power"; and,
therefore, no action could be taken to which all
the powers, — which knew that they were pitted
against one another, — could not agree. The
small states were all in leading-strings, each one
thinking of its own exposure and, in some in-
84 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
stances, of its own designs. It is well that we
have reached a point where the truth may be told
and where the real causes of conflict may be
openly discussed.
There can be among really constitutional states
no discrimination based on mere forms of govern-
ment. These grow out of the exigencies of each
nation; and by its own principles each constitu-
tional state is prohibited from dictating its
form of government to any other. Monarchy,
oligarchy, or democracy, all and equally may en-
ter into the family of nations as long as they ac-
cept and respect the principles of law. But eco-
nomic imperialism is a spirit and not a form.
Until that is renounced there can be no society of
states, because it is anti-social, predatory, and
based on arbitrary force. So long as nations,
whatever their form of government, resort to mili-
tary power in order to subordinate other nations,
and forcibly extort from them economic advan-
tages, so long civilization will find itself face to
face with a dangerous enemy.
If the Entente Allies are sincere in this war,
they are prepared to make an end of forceful
exploitation and to enter into solemn engagements
ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM 85
to keep the faith. They have appealed to the con-
science of mankind. They have defined their
own conceptions of right and wrong. They have
professed to be ready to die for them. They have
insisted upon the sanctity of treaty obligations.
They have proclaimed the rights of defenseless
peoples. They have asserted that humanity and
national morality are to be preferred to empire.
In this they have risen to a great height, from
which it would be humiliating ever to descend.
To all who believe in their sincerity they have
spoken with a divinely prophetic voice; and if
they are true to their professions, they will create
a new era in the history of the world.
What then is the attitude of the Central Pow-
ers, Germany and Austria, toward this standard?
Are they also ready to accept it?
If the German Empire has an authorized cham-
pion and apologist, entitled by position and at-
tainments to be heard and credited, it is the
former imperial chancellor, Prince von Biilow.
In the first sentence of his book on "Imperial
Germany," published just before the war began,
he says: "Germany is the youngest of the Great
86 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
Powers of Europe; an uninvited and unwelcome
intruder when it demanded its share in the treas-
ures of the world." The reason is frankly
stated. "This union of the states of the Mid-Eu-
ropean continent," he says, "so long prevented,
so often feared, and at last accomplished by the
force of German arms and incomparable states-
manship, seemed to imply something of a threat,
or at any rate a disturbing factor."
It may well be doubted if, at the time of the
establishment of the German Empire, it was re-
garded by the world at large as a "disturbing
factor," much less as a "threat." German unity
having been attained, Bismarck's avowed policy
was to guard it from danger from any possible
coalition of adverse powers. As long as that
regime lasted, no disturbance of the peace was
looked for from Germany. Prince von Biilow
himself quotes Bismarck as saying: "In Serbia
I am an Austrian, in Bulgaria I am a Russian,
in Egypt I am English." At the Congress of
Berlin, in 1878, all Europe except Russia was
willing to accept the great chancellor at his own
valuation as an "honest broker" interested chiefly
in the peace of Europe; and as regards Russia,
ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM 87
that was in Bismarck's mind "the wild elephant"
that "was to walk between the two tame ele-
phants, Germany and Austria"!
But Prince von Billow's own interpretation of
the meaning of German unity is, it must be con-
fessed, somewhat disquieting. The voluntary
and spontaneous movement of the German people,
he affirms, could never have created the empire.
It was only through a struggle with the rest of
Europe, he explains, that the Germanic spirit
could be evoked. "The opposition in Germany
itself could hardly be overcome," he continues,
"except by such a struggle. By this means na-
tional policy was interwoven with international
policy; with incomparable audacity and construc-
tive statesmanship, in consummating the work of
uniting Germany, Bismarck left out of play the
political capabilities of the Germans, in which
they have never excelled, while he called into ac-
tion their fighting powers, which have always
been their strongest point."
These are illuminating words by the former
chancellor of the empire, uttered in a spirit of
historic truth; and it is in the same spirit that they
are here cited. The world would have no fear
88 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
of the German people, although unified and
strong, if their old-time qualities were in control ;
but, almost against its will, it seems, Germany
became an imperial power and entered interna-
tional politics, for which Prussian domination
opened the way, and centralized military as-
cendancy furnished the means of action. Prince
von Billow does not permit the German people
themselves or their neighbors to forget that it was
not the political capabilities of the constituent
states, but Prussian military prowess alone that
created and can further extend the empire.
"The German Empire of medieval times," the
former chancellor writes, "was not founded by the
voluntary union of the tribes, but by the victory
of one single tribe over the others, who for a long
time unwillingly bore the rule of the stronger."
And, in order to leave no doubt of the indebted-
ness of the German people to Prussia, but rather
to show them their complete dependence upon its
force of arms, he continues: "As the old Em-
pire was founded by a superior tribe, so the new
was founded by the strongest of the individual
states. ... In a modern form, but in the old
way, the German nation has, after a thousand
ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM 89
years, once again, and more perfectly, completed
the work which it accomplished in early times,
and for whose destruction it alone was to
blame."
It is precisely this return to the past, this
frank revival of the methods in use a thousand
years ago, this acceptance of a theory of the state
which civilization has everywhere rejected, and
this frank emphasis upon the intrinsic superior-
ity of "fighting powers," that have made Europe
afraid of Germany, and created a distrust of the
use intended to be made of its tremendous ener-
gies.
And this distrust is not removed by the picture
which Prince von Biilow paints of the intellectual
state of Germany. "German intellect," he says,
"had already reached its zenith without the help
of Prussia. The princes of the West were the
patrons of German culture; the Hohenzollerns
were the political teachers and taskmasters."
There is as yet, he affirms, no fusion between the
Prussian and the German spirit. Representa-
tives of German intellectual life, he assures us,
sometimes regard the Prussian state as a "hostile
power," and the Prussian at times considers the
90 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
free development of the German intellect as a "de-
structive force." "Again and again," he declares,
"in Parliament and in the press accusations are
levelled against Prussia in the name of freedom,
and against the undaunted German intellect in
the name of order." Between them, he assures
us, there is as yet no real reconciliation.
It does not admit of doubt that, if Germany
were to-day in the mood it was when the German
universities and cultivated classes voiced their
sentiments in 1848, there would be a vigorous
movement for internationalism. Instead of this,
on its cloistered side, the German nation conceives
of itself as a universal spirit of righteousness —
humanity inspired by divinity — working for in-
carnation in mankind through its superior forms
of culture. In other countries, it is assumed, in-
dividual men are seeking only their own private
happiness. They have no sense of universality
or principle of organization. The German state
cares for all its own. It alone, therefore, has the
secret of ultimate victory. It alone can save the
world from degeneration and decay. For this
overwhelming reason it ought to conquer, domi-
nate, and reconstruct the world!
ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM 91
Dies ist unser! so lass uns sagen und so es behaupten.
Considered by itself, this Weltanschauung
would be entirely harmless, a form of innocuous
spiritual pride; but, taken in connection with the
Prussian military organization, to which it looks
as a means of action, it has become portentous.
Like the faith of Islam, with which Pan-German-
ism unconsciously compares itself, it has kindled
a fire of fanaticism that does not shrink from
extremes; and thus, to the pride of culture, is
added the zeal of religion:
Wir sind des Hammergottes Geschlecht
Und wollen sein Weltreich erobern.
This spirit of Pan-Germanism reaches its full
flower in the "Alldeutscher Verband," whose pub-
lications, widely scattered in cheap popular edi-
tions, have done infinite damage to the reputa-
tion of the empire. Among the publications of
this kind the most elaborate is the book entitled
"Gross-Deutschland," published at Leipsic, in
1911, by Otto Richard Tannenberg.
Here is recited and interpreted ethnologically,
92 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
statistically, chartographically, and prophetically
the German dream of Weltpolitik. With erudi-
tion that has involved years of research, and with
a definiteness and perspicuity that leave nothing
unexplained, even down to the definitive treaties
of peace after the Great War shall have accom-
plished its purposes, we have in this elaborate
work a complete exposition of economic imperial-
ism as contemplated by the Pan-Germanists — an
exposition sown broadcast among the people.
There is here no question of diffusing German
culture for the benefit of other nations, and no
attempt to prove the moral value of superior or-
ganization; there is nothing, in fact, but "the
promise of booty, the prospect of profit, the vision
of panting prey waiting to be transfixed," a world
empire, produced by the vivisection of civilized
nations under the edge of the sword.
This urgent exhortation to prompt military ag-
gression, with incredible frankness, makes no pre-
tense of anything forced upon Germany, but de-
clares it to be both expedient and practicable to
acquire new territory, expel its occupants, and
enjoy its resources, without the slightest recogni-
tion of any rights or any law, Being strong,
ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM 93
numerous, and well prepared, it insists that the
time has come for Germans to strike for world
dominion. "The period of preparation," Tan-
nenberg declares, "has lasted a long time (from
1871 to 1911) — forty years of toil on land and
sea, the end constantly in view. The need now
is to begin the battle, to vanquish, and to con-
quer; to gain new territories — lands for colon-
ization for the German peasants, fathers of fu-
ture warriors, and for the future conquests. . . .
'Peace' is a detestable word; peace between Ger-
mans and Slavs is like a treaty made on paper,
between water and fire. . . . Since we have the
force, we have not to seek reasons, — not more
than the English in taking South Africa."
Once brought within the fold of the Greater
Germany, there would be in Europe, aside from
the Balkans, eighty-seven millions, contributed by
Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, and the
Baltic provinces of Russia, originally of German
stock. That some of these populations have
ceased to speak German does not signify; it is
a matter of ethnic unity, the restoration of long-
lost brothers. That other races occupy these ter-
ritories also, sometimes exceeding in numbers the
94 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
German occupants, does not render this less neces-
sary. "If all the German tribes existed to-day,"
writes Tannenberg, "and had the force of the
Low Saxons, there would be neither Latins nor
Slavs. The frontiers of Europe would be the
frontiers of Germany in Europe."
But this scheme of Germanic expansion does
not end with the unification of the Teutonic race in
Europe. There would be other Germanies, all
definitely outlined and marked in colors : an Afri-
can Germany, stretching across the dark con-
tinent from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean; a
near Asiatic Germany, covering the whole of the
Ottoman Empire; a far Asiatic Germany, em-
bracing the greater part of China; an oceanic
Germany, including all the Dutch islands in the
Pacific; and even an American Germany, cover-
ing the whole of the southern half of South Amer-
ica. Such are the Teutonic ambitions and the
Teutonic plans of conquest as delineated upon
Tannenberg's future map of the world.
Wherever there are Germans, wherever Ger-
mans go, there the standard of the imperial eagle
should be set up. "We are eighty-seven millions
of representatives of German nationality on our
ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM 95
continent," runs this exhortation to universal
dominion. "Our country is the most populous,
the best organized. The new era is at hand. We
shall fight and we shall conquer. ... If in the
time of the great migrations a man of mental and
military strength had arisen to group the formid-
able, unnumbered, and innumerable mass of the
German people, to give it one will, one thought,
in politics or in religion, that admirable force,
perhaps the greatest that has ever existed, would
not have been dissipated by an insensate individ-
ualism. The movement would have united to
the force of Islam the German tenacity. . . . The
culture of Europe would, to-day, be purely Ger-
man, and with it the entire world."
How terrific this incorrigible spirit of tribalism
is can be realized only when we stop to reflect
what the culture of the time of the great migra-
tions was, and what this unchained brute force
and tenacity would have inflicted upon Europe,
if it had never been tempered and ameliorated
by the Latin influences that gave it the first sem-
blance to civilization.
"In the good old time," writes Tannenberg, "it
sometimes happened that a strong people attacked
96 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
a feeble one, exterminated it, and expelled it from
its patrimony. To-day these acts of violence are
no longer committed. To-day, everything goes
gently in this poor world, and the privileged are
for peace. The little peoples and the debris of
peoples have invented a new word, 'International
Right.' At bottom it is nothing but a calcula-
tion based upon our stupid generosity. . . .
Some one should make room; either the Slavs of
the West or the South, or ourselves ! As we are
the strongest, the choice will not be difficult. . . .
A people can maintain itself only by growing. . . .
Greater Germany is possible only through a strug-
gle with Europe. Russia, France, and England
will oppose the foundation of Greater Germany.
Austria, powerless as she is, will not weigh much
in the balance. At all events, Germans will not
march against Germany."
The aim is not wanting in clear-sightedness.
Not everything can be accomplished at once. "A
customs union of Greater Germany," runs the
project, "with the countries of the Balkans and
the Danube would be in their interest as well as
ours. On the one side, Greater Germany, a world
power, a country industrial and commercial; on
ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM 97
the other, the Magyars, the Rumanians, the Serbs,
the Bulgars, the Albanians, the Greeks, — peoples
exclusively agricultural. ... By that accord,
the commerce of the East, of Syria, and of Meso-
potamia would fall into our hands, . . . not only
a market for the products of industry of the
mother-country, but also a point d'appui and an
advance toward our expansion in the Far East
and in Africa."
Of course none of these aspirations is put forth
with official authority, but not being contradicted,
they appear to have a certain sanction. Certainly
they have never been disavowed by the Imperial
German Government. In part, at least, they have
very high confirmation. Prince von Biilow, for
example, writes : "We have carefully cultivated
good relations with Turkey and Islam, especially
since the journey to the East undertaken by our
Emperor and Empress. These relations are not
of a sentimental nature, for the continued exist-
ence of Turkey serves our interest from the indus-
trial, military, and political points of view. In-
dustrially and financially, Turkey offered us a
rich and fertile field of activity . . . which we
have cultivated with profit"; and he concludes by
98 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
expressing the reliance of Germany upon Turkey
"in the event of a general European war," while
for Austria Turkey is described as "the most con-
venient neighbor possible." For Prince von
Biilow, as he admits, Bismarck's opinion that Tur-
key and the Balkans were not worth the bones of
a single Pomeranian grenadier was no longer to
be entertained. It was, in fact, to the East that
his vision turned.
"No sensible man," he declares, "will ever en-
tertain the idea of recovering either national or
political influence over the lands in the South and
West which were lost so many centuries ago."
For these losses, he admits, "compensation has
been granted by Providence in the East."
"Those possessions," he concludes, "we must and
will retain." But Prince von Biilow has never
been an advocate of a Little Germany. "Bis-
marck's successors," he declared in the Reichstag,
on November 14, 1906, "must hot imitate, but
develop his policy. If the course of events de-
mands that we transcend the limits of Bismarck's
aims, then we must do so."
If there has, in fact, as German statesmen pro-
fess, been an "encirclement" of Germany, is it to
ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM 99
be wondered at, in view of the frank proclama-
tion of German plans of territorial expansion?
No part of the world has been considered immune
from attack. "For us," says Tannenberg, "it is
a vital question to acquire colonial empires which
will enable us to remain independent of the good-
will of our competitors, offer us a market for our
products and our industry, and give us the possi-
bility of procuring the raw materials so necessary
and so precious which now are wanting. I men-
tion, for example, only the need of cotton. It
may be to us of no importance at whose expense
it shall be taken. It is essential that we have
these colonies, and that is why we shall have
them. Whether it be at the cost of England or
of France, it is only a question of power, and per-
haps also of a little risk."
How much risk it would be advisable to run
may be inferred from Tannenberg's complaint
that Bismarck's policy was "senile," because as
early as 1885 it did not reach out for Cuba and
the Philippines, especially Cuba, "the pearl of
the Antilles," as large as Bavaria, Wurtemberg,
Baden, and Alsace united; which, Tannenberg
asserts, "was well worth a little war" !
100 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
And he could not drop this subject without add-
ing an insult to the citizens of German origin in
the United States by saying: "The position of
Cuba relative to North America would have
created a new relation between the German peo-
ple and the ten millions of German emigrants
domiciled in the United States; and, beside its
situation, would have given us the preponderance
in the Gulf of Mexico."
"After all," runs this outspoken exhortation to
aggression, "politics is a business," a statement
that recalls Prince von Bulow's observation that
"politics is a rough trade, in which sentimental
souls rarely bring even a simple piece of work to
a successful issue." "Justice and injustice," con-
tinues Tannenberg, "are notions which are neces-
sary only in civil life." And yet he pleads it is
"unjust" that small states, like Belgium and Hol-
land, should possess rich colonies and enjoy
nearly double the per capita wealth enjoyed by
subjects of the German Empire, "only because
these two countries do not bear arms, as we do."
"For that reason," he says, "they capitalize what
they save, and laugh in our faces." But why
should not Germans do the same? Is economic
ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM 101
imperialism after all an unprofitable busi-
ness?
It would be easy, Tannenberg declares, to make
it profitable. Think of Luxemburg, with a total
military strength of only 323 soldiers and officers,
only one man to a thousand of the population!
And Belgium, rich in colonies, a great center of
industry and commerce, with its coal and iron,
and only a paper protection! "Yet Belgium," he
reminds us, "was once a part of the German
Empire."
A subject that awakens very serious reflection
is presented in the appendix to this remarkable
work, which contains the text of the treaties to be
concluded when the war for European conquest
is ended. By the imaginary treaty of Brussels,
drawn up in 1911, France cedes to Germany the
Vosges, with Epinal; Moselle and Meuse, with
Nancy and Luneville; the town of Verdun; and
the Ardennes, with Sedan. France further gives
asylum to the inhabitants of this territory, and
establishes them elsewhere within her own bor-
ders, in order to make room for German settlers;
declares its assent to the incorporation of Belgium,
Holland, Luxemburg, and Switzerland into the
102 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
German Empire; cedes to Germany the twelve
milliards of francs lent to Russia; renounces all
colonies ; and pays to Germany a cash indemnity
of thirty-five milliards of marks. By the suppos-
ititious treaty of Riga, also drawn up in 1911,
Russia cedes vast territories to Germany; creates
a kingdom of Poland on its own soil, where the
Prussian Poles, to be expelled from Prussian
Poland, may reside ; and accepts the incorporation
of Austria, ceded by the Hapsburgs to the Hohen-
zollerns, into the German Empire. As an in-
ducement to Great Britain to sanction these pro-
ceedings, the French and Portuguese colonies are
by these treaties to be divided between the two
empires on the assumption that British neutrality
would be thus insured.
In citing these documents, so frankly disclosing
the Pan-German dream of expansion, there is no
intention to insist, as Andre Cheradame has as-
serted, that these specific plans were all contem-
plated by the highest official authorities of the
German Empire; but it is a disturbing reflection
that, as he points out, ninety per cent, of the whole
program of the Pan-German propaganda, so far
as the continent of Europe is concerned, has, not-
ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM 103
withstanding unexpected opposition, actually been
carried into temporary effect.
What is most discouraging from the point of
view of international society is the fact that the
official philosophy of Prussia, which, as Prince
von Biilow reminds us, "attained her greatness as
a country of soldiers and officials . . . and to
this day is still in all essentials a state of soldiers
and officials," has taken command of German
intelligence and industry. That philosophy is
explicitly stated by the former imperial chancellor
in the following words :
"It is a law of life and development in history
that, where two national civilizations meet, they
fight for ascendancy. In the struggle between
nationalities, one nation is the hammer and the
other the anvil ; one is the victor and the other the
vanquished."
CHAPTER IV
THE VISION OF A COMMONWEALTH
SO long as governments insist upon the right
of a strong state to subjugate or to exploit
against its interest a weaker state, there will be
no international harmony, and the world will be
subjected to the ravages of recurrent wars. The
attitude of the great powers upon this subject is,
therefore, of the greatest moment, for it will de-
termine the fate of civilization; and, in the end,
in all but the most absolute governments, this
attitude will be affected by the predominant opin-
ions of thoughtful men.
It is, then, of interest to inquire, What is the
present position of the great powers, upon whose
decisions the future peace of the world will chiefly
depend, regarding the rights of the small states,
and of those colonial possessions which in the past
have often been so cruelly exploited for the benefit
of their overlords ? In brief, are there any powers
104
VISION OF A COMMONWEALTH 105
that are willing to submit to a peaceful decision of
their own rights in relation to the weaker states,
and voluntarily to subject themselves to principles
of law and equity in their conduct generally?
Upon the answer to these questions turns the
whole problem of even partial international or-
ganization and the prospect of eliminating the
military control of international affairs. Even
though it should be found that a certain number
of powers were disposed to apply strictly ethical
principles to their business transactions, without
throwing their military force into the scale, it
would not follow that military force could be en-
tirely dispensed with; for, as long as there re-
mained in the world even one formidable military
power that persisted in using force for its material
advantage and refused to resort to pacific means
for adjusting conflicts of interest, it would still
be necessary for the powers that were ready to dis-
pense with military decisions to arm themselves
for defense against aggression, and perhaps to
combine their forces in the interest of safety and
justice.
It would, however, mark the beginning of a new
era if a number of great powers were sufficiently
106 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
enlightened to perceive that economic imperialism
is, in effect, an anachronism, and that their real
interests would be better served by a combination
not for the balance of power, but for a decided
preponderance of power, that would be able by
their union, on the one hand, to establish a sys-
tem of legal relations and conciliatory policies;
and, on the other, to render military exploitation
an unprofitable and even a dangerous adventure.
It would, undoubtedly, be both unwise and un-
just to limit in any way the extent of interna-
tional union were it not for the fact that, until
profound changes occur, a universal union would
seem to be impossible. There is at present no
unanimity among the nations regarding any au-
thoritative basis for a society of states. No pro-
posal has ever been made for the recognition of
any such basis in any international conference.
Because some powers have held that the state is a
law to itself, and that there is no law which it is
bound to obey, it has been impossible even to sug-
gest that there is for sovereign states such a thing
as outlawry. If there is in the nature of things
no super-state law, and if states cannot make it
VISION OF A COMMONWEALTH 107
without general consent, then of course no state
can be treated as an outlaw; for there is no stand-
ard by which the legality of its conduct may be
determined.
But it is still possible for a union of states to be
formed which can determine by what law its mem-
bers will be governed, and it is possible for them
to exclude from it any state that does not accept
this law. It is likely that if the formation of
civil society had been suspended until every bri-
gand and every housebreaker in the community
was ready to favor a law against robbery, civil
society would never have come into existence.
The only way, it would appear, in which there
is ever to be a real society of states is for those
great powers which can find a sufficient commun-
ity of interest to unite in the determination that
they will themselves observe principles of justice
and equity, and that they will unite their forces
in defense of them.
It would be well if, at the conclusion of the
Great War, or, if possible, even before it is ended,
certain basic principles could be laid down that
would be accepted by the belligerents as inher-
ently just and equitable, and solemnly subscribed
108 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
to as binding upon them. Upon no other basis
would a permanent peace appear to be possible.
Any other result would be a mere armistice; for,
whatever it may have been in the beginning, the
present war is now declared to be "a conflict of
principles," a battle for law and right on the one
side, and for arbitrary power on the other.
If the conflict is really a struggle for a just or-
ganization of international relations, it is of the
highest importance to the cause of civilization
that the principles necessary to a true society of
states should be clearly formulated and, as far as
possible, accepted now, while the conflict is still
going on; and those who profess to champion
them should not hesitate solemnly to pledge them-
selves to respect and obey them. We should then
know with greater certainty what the purposes of
all the belligerents really are.
In a book on "The War of Democracy," Vis-
count Bryce, whose writings and personality are
held in very high esteem in this country, employs
in the subtitle the expression, "the struggle for a
new Europe." What, then, is this new Europe
to be for which, as Lord Bryce would have us
believe, the Entente Allies are struggling? Does
VISION OF A COMMONWEALTH 109
it merely involve some changes in political geog-
raphy? Thoughtful men will not be satisfied
with that, for the mere shifting of frontiers, how-
ever reasonable it may seem at the time, has no
guarantee of permanence except by means of
armed force until a better system of international
relations is adopted. Or is it for a mere form of
government that the Allies are contending ? Who
then has the authority to impose upon Europe a
particular kind of polity, and who can assure us
that democracy, if made universal, would always
be wise and just and peaceable? No, it is some-
thing deeper than these outward changes that this
experienced historian and statesman has in mind
when he speaks of "the fundamental significance
of the struggle for a new Europe." "The present
war," he insists, "differs from all that have gone
before it not only in its vast scale and in the vol-
ume of misery it has brought upon the world, but
also in the fact that it is a war of principles, and
a war in which the permanent interests not merely
of the belligerent powers, but of all nations, are
involved as such interests were never involved
before."
That the present war is on either side a purely
110 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
altruistic championship of merely abstract prin-
ciples cannot, of course, be pretended. On the
side of the Entente Allies, as well as on that of
the Central Powers, immediate national interests
of great consequence are involved. But this does
not signify that in its underlying principles and
in its ultimate consequences the struggle may not
in some sense be an affair of all mankind. Our
own country has been already so vitally affected
by it, and is now so deeply involved in all of its
results, that we cannot regard the fate of these
principles with indifference. What is truly sur-
prising to us in this country is that two great em-
pires, England and Russia, and the French Re-
public, which has twice quelled the spirit of im-
perialism within itself and reasserted its love of
freedom, are now solidly united in fighting the
battle of democracy. Suddenly, through the mys-
terious working of some intangible but all-per-
vading and overmastering influence, we have
witnessed this unexpected alinement of nations,
in which there is an almost general repudiation
of the past, a reassertion of the larger claims of
humanity, and a spirit of sacrifice that is an as-
tonishment to all who behold it. There is yet
VISION OF A COMMONWEALTH 111
to be fought a battle more sublime than any ever
yet waged in the name of democracy, because it
will be a battle for that which gives to democracy
its indestructible vitality — the essential dignity of
the human person, and its inherent right to free-
dom, to justice, and to the quality of mercy at the
hands of one's fellow-men. This is no tribal ad-
venture, no thrust for territorial expansion, no
quest for new markets and undeveloped resources,
no aspiration for world supremacy; but a con-
solidated human demand that in the future the
world be so regulated that innocent and non-com-
batant peoples may live under the protection of
law, may depend upon the sanctity of treaties,
may be secure in their independence and rights
of self-government, and that the people of all
nations may enjoy in safety the use of the great
seas and oceans which nature has provided as the
highways of peaceful commerce and fruitful
human intercourse.
In its beginning the European War was un-
doubtedly a conflict of national and racial inter-
ests, a struggle for the future control of the Balkan
Peninsula and the debris of the disintegrating
Ottoman Empire. Was the prize to be possessed
112 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
by the Teuton or the Slav? The assassination at
Sarajevo and the part in it attributed to Serbia
were only signals and excuses for the beginning
of a drama already carefully staged and in which
the parts were supposed to be carefully assigned.
Germany intended that it should be a swift, short
war, in which the principal prize would be won
by a comparatively small effort, and others inci-
dentally acquired. But interests were affected
and forces were evoked that had not entered into
the calculations of the aggressors. It was the un-
expected emergence of these new forces, and the
nature of the resistance met with in the course
of the war, that entirely changed its character,
and converted it into a war of principles ; for the
progress of the conflict disclosed an antithesis of
conceptions regarding matters of general human
interest that had hitherto been unsuspected. The
whole system of law, treaties, and human obliga-
tions which had been counted upon as furnishing
a sure foundation for civilized society was sud-
denly discovered to be without solidity. In the
general debacle the hopes, the beliefs, even the
friendships, with which the present century had
opened so auspiciously in matters international
VISION OF A COMMONWEALTH 113
were suddenly swept away. It is needless to
dwell upon barbarities on land and sea that a
few years ago would have been utterly incredible.
Our thoughts must take a deeper direction. We
must face the fact that we have not to deal with
mere incidents, but with the underlying causes of
which they are the outward expression. If the
postulates of economic imperialism are correct,
there is nothing abnormal in all this destruction,
desecration, and slaughter at which the minds
and consciences of many have revolted ; for upon
this assumption, sovereign power is acting wholly
within its rights, and is even engaged in the
solemn execution of its sacred duty. There is,
therefore, upon this assumption, nothing left to
us but to arm, mine, fortify, and entrench, re-
pudiating internationalism and trusting solely to
our physical instruments of defense. In truth,
there are before the nations only two alternatives :
on the one hand, the reestablishment of interna-
tional existence upon a more solid foundation
than that afforded by military rivalry and the
supremacy of national power, and, on the other,
a return to the life of troglodytes. If the world
is to escape permanent international anarchy, it
114 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
will be through the decision of governments to
accept and loyally respect certain principles of
justice and mutual obligation in the form of a
constitution of civilization in which are recog-
nized the reciprocal rights and duties of separate
nations. It is within the capacity of a few great
powers to adopt and maintain such principles;
and they will do so whenever the masses of the
people, speaking in their sovereign right, declare
that their governments must accept and conform
to them. If this is what Lord Bryce means, when
he speaks of the "War of Democracy," then he is
voicing an appeal to all thoughtful persons in
every civilized nation; for the democratic concep-
tion, based as it is on the rights of man, is the only
true source of law for the rights of states also,
and is alone adapted to that general extension
which opens a vision of a commonwealth of man-
kind in which all nations, regardless of terri-
torial boundaries, may rightfully claim a place.
Are there, then, any nations that are prepared
to be guided by this vision, to forego the aspira-
tion for world supremacy, and to unite with one
VISION OF A COMMONWEALTH 115
another in the creation of such a general common-
wealth?
It is an interesting fact not only that the people
of Russia have overthrown autocracy, but that,
in the midst of a great crisis, another power which
the world has regarded as imperial should openly
recognize the truth that it has, by the forces of
its own national development, ceased to be an
"empire" in the old sense of the word, and has
become a confraternity of free and virtually self-
governing communities.
The present war has revealed to Great Britain,
and made it evident to all the world, that British
strength does not at present consist in the exer-
cise of an imperium, but in the recognition of the
essential freedom and the equal rights of what
the most authoritative British statesmen now call
the "autonomous colonies"; and it is especially
interesting to find a conservative, like Bonar Law,
saying that what was impossible before the war
will be easy after it, and that the relation of the
dominions to the mother-country would never
again be what it was before. It is, in fact, a con-
federation of autonomous self-governing repub-
116 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
lies, rather than an empire in the proper sense,
that is coming into existence through this internal
transformation of the British Empire. Common
aims, common safety, common interests, and com-
mon ideas — these are the f oundations of this con-
fraternity. It is not the bugle-call of imperial
command that has brought troops from every
quarter of the globe to participate with Great
Britain in the present struggle, but the common
conviction that democracy is in danger and that
free nations must stand together. An English
historian, in the midst of the war, writes :
This is a testing time for Democracy. The people of
Great Britain and the Dominions, to whom all the world
looks as trustees, together with France and America, of
the great democratic tradition, are brought face to face,
for the first time, with their full responsibility as British
citizens. Upon the way in which that responsibility is
realized and discharged depends the future of the demo-
cratic principle, not only in these islands, but throughout
the world.
And this is the conviction of the dominions
themselves. To the astonishment of the world,
not one has failed to respond. Sir Clifford Sifton
said in an address at Montreal :
VISION OF A COMMONWEALTH 117
Bound by no constitution, bound by no law, equity, or
obligation, Canada has decided as a nation to make war.
We have levied an army; we have sent the greatest army to
England that has ever crossed the Atlantic, to take part
in the battles of England. We have placed ourselves in
opposition to great world powers. We are now train-
ing and equipping an army greater than the combined
forces of Wellington and Napoleon at the battle of Water-
loo.
Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and
even India, have responded voluntarily in a simi-
lar manner; but they did so not as imperial pos-
sessions, but as virtually independent nations,
sure of themselves, confident of their future, and
inspired by the vision of a union in which for all
coming time they are to be free and independent
participants. From the uttermost parts of the
earth they have gathered "to honor their un-
covenanted bond, obedient to one uncalculating
purpose ; and the fields of their final achievement,
where they lie in a fellowship too close and a
peace too deep to be broken, are the image and
the epitome of the cause for which they fell."
But in all this fine consciousness of British
unity there is not the slightest touch of really im-
perial influence. The Canadian and the Austra-
118 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
lian do not wish to be rated as Englishmen, and
would sometimes even resent it. Common tradi-
tions there are; but they are not merely traditions
of race, of language, or of religion. They are
primarily traditions of liberty. It is not the state
that holds them together; it is the conviction that
all that makes the state worth saving is the pro-
tection it affords to freedom, the value it gives to
the individual life.
But such an inspiration can never end in a
stolid and pertinacious tribalism. It feels a
larger kinship and seeks a wider partnership. It
gives unity to the nation, but it reaches out for
international friendships and affinities. It seeks
to establish the greater commonwealth of nations.
It aspires to a place in a system. And the same
Canadian who said that Canada was ready to
take part in the battles of England said at the
same time : "I say to you that Canada must stand
now as a nation. . . . The nations will say, if
you can levy armies to make war, you can attend
to your own business, and we will not be referred
to the head of the Empire; we want you to answer
our questions directly."
By the force of its own free development de-
VISION OF A COMMONWEALTH 119
mocracy must become international. In no other
way can it realize its own security. In no other
way can it attain to its own ideals. "It is neces-
sary," says a Canadian writer, "to declare with
utmost haste . . . that motives of national ag-
grandisement and national enmity must be sub-
ordinated to the desire for the larger benefits grow-
ing out of peace and international good-will."
And never will the autonomous colonies enter a
war in the name of the empire in which they do
not have a voice. Said the high commissioner of
the Australian Commonwealth, Mr. Andrew
Fisher, on his arrival in London:
If I had stayed in Scotland, I should have been able to
heckle my member on questions of imperial policy, and
to vote for or against him on that ground. I went to
Australia, and I have been prime minister. But all the
time I have had no say whatever about imperial policy —
no say whatever. Now that can't go on. There must be
some change.
In April, 1916, at the conference of the Entente
Allies held at Paris, the sense of a commonwealth
took a wider range, and this meeting, it has been
held, assumed the form of "a legislative parlia-
ment of France, Russia, England, Italy, Belgium,
120 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
Serbia, Japan, and the self-governing British
Dominions." The subject of interest was finan-
cial solidarity during the present war, and even
after it. Some of the exclusiveness that marked
that conference may vanish, and will certainly
be diminished after the war is over; but it may
well be that, "if the agreements growing out of this
event stand the test of time, they will dispose ef-
fectively of the contention that dissimilar nations
cannot act in harmony for their mutual advantage
in matters international."
Three of these nations, Britain, France, and
Russia, are henceforth to be bound together as at
the beginning of the war it was never imagined
they could ever be by a new sense of the value and
the meaning of democracy. They will be in re-
lations that will enable them after the war to dis-
pense with military action except for their com-
mon defense. With the sincere support of other
nations for common purposes, there should be no
room in the world for economic imperialism in its
existing form. Deplorable, indeed, would be a
further and more powerfully organized example
of it by prohibition of commercial intercourse,
which would be, in effect, an indefinite prolonga-
VISION OF A COMMONWEALTH 121
tion of international strife on economic lines.
But such a purpose is not in the highest interest
of these powers ; and, when this comes to be duly
considered in the treaties of peace it may happily
be averted.
Taking all its past into account, it would be
impossible to exempt the British Empire from the
charge of economic imperialism. No nation has
ever been more constantly actuated by the spirit
of commercialism sustained by military force than
the British. The fault is frankly admitted by its
own historians. Professor Ramsay Muir says:
This motive has been present in many of our own wars;
it has been the predominant motive with us perhaps more
often than with any other people, from the time when we
fought to overthrow the Spanish monopoly of the tropical
West, to the time when we waged two wars with China
in order to force open the gates of that vast market.
But Great Britain has learned the lesson of
experience. It is not just to blame a progressive
and liberal people for the actions of the past, when
other standards of conduct were generally ac-
cepted, and when national rivalry was necessi-
tated by the conditions of the time. The pressing
122 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
question is, Shall these conditions be perpetuated?
Great Britain now answers, "No."
The Imperial German Government alleges that
prior to 1914 there was a conspiracy headed by
Great Britain, to suppress "the liberty of national
evolution" of the German Empire and to deny
"the freedom of the seas."
What then is meant by "the liberty of national
evolution" and "the freedom of the seas"?
Aiming to become a world power, Germany has
desired to possess a free hand in acquiring terri-
tory in all parts of the world, without being sub-
ject to the restraint of other powers. Portions of
every continent are marked on the map as future
German possessions. "The German Empire,"
says Franz von Liszt, "has not yet acquired the
title of a World Power for it is far from being
comparable with Great Britain and Russia, either
by the number of its inhabitants or the independ-
ence of its economic life. Still less can Austria-
Hungary pretend to this title." To obtain it is,
however, he thinks, a legitimate aspiration of the
Central empires. There will, of course, he ad-
mits, be opposition by other nations; but the goal
VISION OF A COMMONWEALTH 123
is worthy of the effort. "The supremacy of the
world," he says, "belongs to the Power which by
its geographic configuration, the extent of its ter-
ritory, and the number of its population, possesses
a complete economic independence." The Ger-
mans claim this as their rightful inheritance.
Their strength, they consider, gives them a title
to it. They are self -a vowed contestants for world
supremacy.
And "the freedom of the seas," what does that
imply? It signifies, as the Imperial German
Government understand it, the unrestrained privi-
lege of obtaining a colonial empire by means of
maritime strength.
To realize such an ambition there must be left
no rival on the sea who would be able to prevent
it. Speaking of the sea power of England, a
German writer says :
The war between her and us . . . turns upon the mas-
tery of the seas, and the priceless values bound up with
that; and a coexistence of the two States, of which many
Utopians dream, is ruled out as definitely as was the co-
existence of Rome and Carthage. The antagonism be-
tween England and Germany will, therefore, remain until
one of them is finally brought to the ground.
124 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
It is this incessant invocation of war and the
indisposition to accept the possibility of peace
that have made it so difficult for foreign peoples
to understand the mind of Germany, or for those
who wish to be friends to explain and defend the
German attitude toward other nations. Even the
German emperor himself has not hesitated to
throw out a challenge to all the maritime powers.
"I will never rest," he has said, "until I have
raised my navy to a position similar to that occu-
pied by my army." And the reason for this de-
termination he frankly declares in the words:
"Germany's colonial aims can only be gained
when Germany has become lord of the ocean."
What, prior to August, 1914, had Great Britain
done to call forth an accusation of irreconcilable
hostility? No foreboding of such antagonism ex-
isted in 1890, when, for the protectorate of Zan-
zibar, Great Britain surrendered the island of
Helgoland to Germany; or in 1895, when that
stronghold became the fortified gate of the Kiel
Canal at its North Sea terminus. Even when the
first extensive naval legislation was enacted in
Germany, in 1900, it created no great disturbance
in England. The first indication that British ap-
VISION OF A COMMONWEALTH 125
prehension was aroused was the building of the
earliest "dreadnaughts" by England in 1905.
But even in 1907 Germany was making cordial
public professions of faith in her English rival's
fairness and generosity. "Everywhere in the
world," said a representative of the imperial Ger-
man foreign office, in May of that year, to a dele-
gation of British journalists, "where Great
Britain has brought any country under her in-
fluence, she has never suppressed the trade de-
velopments in other lands, as many nations have
to their own detriment. You have always de-
voted your energies and labors to the opening up
of the country's sources of production, bringing
it nearer to civilization and progress. You have
never excluded other states from territories under
British influence, but allowed them to go along
with you. This policy of yours is now celebrat-
ing one of its greatest triumphs in Egypt."
In the following summer occurred the second
conference at The Hague. Great Britain pro-
posed the limitation of armaments on the sea, but
in deference to the wishes of the German delegates
the proposal was given formal sepulture, with
solemn funeral rites conducted in a spirit of
126 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
friendly consideration by the Russian president of
the conference.
The eager interest of German military circles
in the construction of the Zeppelin airships in
1908 no doubt really disturbed the British mind;
for here was a device which, it was believed in
Germany, would be able to float in triumph over
the British fleet and bring to terms the coast towns
of the island and even London itself. But Eng-
land, under a Liberal ministry, was not inclined
to war, and renewed the proposal of a holiday in
fleet-building, reinforced by the importunities of
the United States. In 1914 a treaty had amicably
regulated the affair of the Bagdad railway.
Even as late as July 29, 1914, three days before
the German declaration of war, Great Britain was
so far from being considered in Germany as the
arch-conspirator in bringing about war that the
Imperial German Government sought and ex-
pected Great Britain's complete neutrality in the
war it then intended to declare on Russia and
France, on condition that Germany would take
from France only her colonies and leave undis-
turbed her territorial integrity on the continent.
So great at that time was the confidence in Eng-
VISION OF A COMMONWEALTH 127
land's disinclination for war that it was believed
she would passively consent to Germany's forcible
appropriation of the French colonies without even
a pourboire in compensation for this indulgence.
It may be useful to recall what the conditions
actually were when the German emperor on
August 1, 1914, declared war on Russia. Dis-
missing from our minds for the moment all ques-
tions regarding the underlying causes of the war,
and without at this time attempting to pass judg-
ment upon any of the issues involved in it, let us
fix our attention upon the military situation as it
existed on that fateful day when the whole
mechanism of European security suddenly broke
down.
We may pass over the ultimatum to Serbia,
Austria's invasion of Serbian territory, and Rus-
sia's resolve to protect the small Slav state or pro-
cure a hearing for its case as a question of Euro-
pean interest by which armed conflict might, per-
haps, have been avoided. On August 1, the Ger-
man emperor had in his hands the following
documents :
1. A telegram from the czar, dated July 30,
128 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
reading: "The military measures which have
now come into force were decided five days ago
for reasons of defense and on account of Austria's
preparations. I hope from all my heart that
these won't in any way interfere with your part as
mediator, which I greatly value."
2. A telegraphic instruction by Sir Edward
Grey, dated July 30, directing Sir Edward
Goschen, the British ambassador at Berlin, to say
to the imperial German chancellor "most earn-
estly," that "the one way of maintaining the good
relations between England and Germany is that
they should continue to work together to preserve
the peace of Europe ; if we succeed in this object,
the mutual relations of Germany and England
will, I believe, be ipso facto improved and
strengthened. . . . And I will say this: If the
peace of Europe can be preserved, and the present
crisis safely passed, my own endeavor will be to
promote some arrangement to which Germany
could be a party, by which she could be assured
that no aggressive or hostile policy would be pur-
sued against her or her allies by France, Russia,
and ourselves."
3. A telegram dated July 31, from Mr. Sazo-
VISION OF A COMMONWEALTH 129
noff, Russian minister for foreign affairs, reading
as follows: "If Austria will agree to check the
advance of her troops on Serbian territory; if,
recognizing that the dispute between Austria and
Serbia has become a question of European inter-
est, she will allow the Great Powers to look into
the matter and decide what satisfaction Serbia
could afford to the Austro-Hungarian Govern-
ment without impairing her rights as a sovereign
State or her independence, Russia will undertake
to maintain her waiting attitude."
4. A telegram of July 31 from Sir Edward
Grey, reading: "If Germany could get any rea-
sonable proposal put forward which made it clear
that Germany and Austria were striving to pre-
serve European peace and that Russia and France
would be unreasonable if they rejected it, I would
support it at St. Petersburg and Paris, and go
the length of saying that if Russia and France
would not accept it, His Majesty's Government
would have nothing more to do with the conse-
quences."
5. A telegram from Count Berchtold, minister
for foreign affairs of Austria-Hungary to all Aus-
tro-Hungarian embassies and legations, dated
130 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
July 31, to be communicated to all governments,
reading: "Negotiations dealing with the situa-
tion are proceeding between the cabinets at Vienna
and St. Petersburg, and we still hope that they
may lead to a general understanding."
In these circumstances, on August 1, the Ger-
man emperor, having received no reply to his
demand that Russian mobilization should cease
within twelve hours, declared war on Russia, thus
automatically involving France, Russia's ally, al-
though knowing that France did not desire war.
The sole reason given for this action was that
Russia had not at that time ceased the mobiliza-
tion of her army in defense of Serbia against Aus-
tria's attack, there being no direct quarrel between
Russia and Germany. How unjust was the ulti-
matum sent on the previous day to Russia, is
shown by the telegram of the German emperor to
King George, on August 1, the day he declared
war on Russia. The telegram was sent under
the impression, which proved erroneous, that
Great Britain was ready to guarantee the neu-
trality of France; yet the German emperor de-
clared that it was "too late" to stop the mobiliza-
tion begun on that day ! The telegram reads :
VISION OF A COMMONWEALTH 131
I have just received the communication of your Govern-
ment offering French neutrality under the guarantee of
Great Britain. To this offer there was added the question
whether, under these conditions, Germany would refrain
from attacking France. For technical reasons the mobil-
ization which I have already ordered this afternoon on two
fronts — east and west — must proceed according to the ar-
rangements made. A counter order cannot now be given,
as your telegram unfortunately came too late; but if France
offers me her neutrality, which must be guaranteed by the
English army and navy, I will naturally give up the idea
of an attack on France and employ my troops elsewhere.
I hope that France will not be nervous. The troops on
my frontier are at this moment being kept back by tele-
graph and by telephone from crossing the French fron-
tier. William.
No one of these nations, it is alleged, desired a
general war, and yet it came as a matter of mili-
tary necessity! "I hope France will not be
nervous. The troops on my frontier are at this
moment being held back by telegraph and tele-
phone from crossing the French frontier." And,
according to Berlin, mobilization had not even
been ordered until five o'clock of that same day!
What a white light is poured by this last tele-
gram upon the mechanism of destruction that had
been so laboriously prepared ! Only one man in
132 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
Europe who could stop the war, and he caught in
the fatal toils of his own machinery! For tech-
nical reasons, telegram too late, German troops
held back on the French frontier by telegraph and
telephone — I hope France will not be nervous.
But why this solicitude for the nerves of France?
Was Germany also nervous?
I am making here no accusation. What I wish
to emphasize is that the machinery for preserving
peace had not been sufficiently organized, while
the machinery of war had become so efficient as
to be virtually uncontrollable. No one, we are
assured, wanted war. All wanted peace. Serbia
wanted justice. So also, it is said, did Austria.
But Europe had not provided for justice to a small
state.
The time has come when Europe should reas-
sert its moral unity and make an end of tribalism.
All the machinery for international cooperation
already exists, and needs only the adjustment of
it to the purposes of peace. The railways and
the steamships that have facilitated the mobiliza-
tion of troops and munitions of war, the tele-
graphic lines which have transmitted the orders
VISION OF A COMMONWEALTH 133
setting great armies in motion, the vast factories
that have been forging instruments of destruc-
tion, are already there, waiting to convey the mer-
chandise, communicate the messages, and produce
the commodities of peace. The one thing lacking
is the effective organization of international jus-
tice. Let it once be agreed that each people shall
be secure in its freedom and independence, and
that nations may be as sure of justice as are in-
dividual men in a well-organized state, and the
transformation would be already accomplished.
Depending, as it does, upon good faith, this
regeneration is essentially an inner process in
the minds and souls of men. It cannot be im-
posed from without. It cannot be forced upon
one nation by another. It cannot be effected by
fighting. It will never come as the spontaneous
act of governments. It must come from the over-
whelming determination of the people of many
nations to have it so.
The real testing time of democracy will be the
moment of victory ; for victory there must be, and
yet a victory that is not a conquest. If the claims
of democracy in this war are to be accepted, it is
intended to be a defense of the conquered against
134 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
the conqueror, a protest against the ordeal of bat-
tle as the decisive factor in determining the fate
of nations. To invert the roles would be to aban-
don the cause. If there is to be a commonwealth
of nations, the Central Powers should not be ex-
cluded from it except by their own will. The
first article in a treaty of peace should be a state-
ment of the principles for which we are now
fighting in this war and the establishment of a
commonwealth based upon them. Respect for
treaties, the rights of the small states, the rule of
law, the abandonment of conquests, the right of
a people to choose its affiliations, the ultimate ex-
tinction of militarism as a system, the submission
of justiciable differences to a competent tribunal,
the responsibility of states to the society of states
— these are the essential terms of a durable treaty
of peace. If this can be attained, there will in-
deed be a new Europe.
Should a nation wait to be vanquished before
accepting such a peace? Is it not the only peace
in which any nation can place its trust? Against
any other the vanquished would be in perpetual
revolt. But in such a peace all men would at the
same time have the support of their own sense of
VISION OF A COMMONWEALTH 135
justice and secure the realization of their own
highest ideals. It would be to all the peoples of
Europe like a proclamation of emancipation.
With it would come the joy of liberty, the sense of
security, the flood-tide of human fellowship. For
such a peace the mighty host of the dead on land
and sea might well rejoice if they could know
that they had bought it with their lives.
CHAPTER V
THE TRANSFIGURATION OF THE GERMAN
EMPIRE
WHAT is the present attitude of Germany
toward a commonwealth of nations? Ac-
cording to the philosophy of the state underlying
the practice of economic imperialism, there is to
be no end to national antagonisms in the pursuit
of power, and this conviction seems to have been
intensified rather than attenuated in the minds of
many Germans during the progress of the war.
One of the most eminent of German historians,
Professor Eduard Meyer of Berlin, wrote in
1915:
Dispelled for all time are the dreams of those well-
intentioned visionaries who hoped for a day when the na-
tions would be at peace forever, and all their disputes
would be settled at the bar of an international tribunal of
arbitration by which war would be made impossible —
dreams that have been so widely entertained in America,
where the people have become effeminate in their senti-
ments in recent years. The Hague Peace Conferences, in-
136
TRANSFIGURATION OF EMPIRE 137
stituted at the suggestion of the Czar, — how great a travesty
in the world's history! — and the palace in which they
were held, are a satire on the times, and subsequent events
have fully justified Germany in her disinclination at first
to participate in this empty farce. 1
It was at the high tide of German victories
that these words were written, and they serve well
to indicate what the permanent attitude of the
German Empire would be in case of a final Ger-
man triumph. There would be no appeal to the
jurists to define the equities of international life.
"A series of long and sanguinary wars," this
writer gravely assures us, "will mark the century
upon which we have entered." And the reason
for this is frankly stated. "The dominating cir-
cumstance by which coming events will be most
strongly influenced will be the impassable gulf
that has opened between England and Germany,
and their feeling of bitter enmity for each other.
So far as we are able to scan the future," he con-
tinues, "a reconciliation is not possible; we Ger-
mans can never forget how England has served
us." And for this reason the conclusion is
1 Neither conference was, in fact, held in the so-called Palace
of Peace. The first assembled in the House in the Wood, the
second in the Hall of the Knights.
138 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
reached that "the era of internationalism is past
and will never return. It will be replaced by a
period of vigorous and ruthless assertion of na-
tional ambition, — the struggle of the nations with
one another. ... To return to the paths of In-
ternationalism, and again sacrifice interests of
great importance to ourselves for the sake of it,
would be a crime against our own people."
This deliberate repudiation of the idea of an
international community of interests and obliga-
tions expresses an entirely new attitude, which no
nation in modern times has ever yet taken. It
sweeps away with disdain the whole foundation
upon which a society of states must be based.
For such a society it would substitute the absolute,
all-dominating power of an organization which
contains in itself no standard or consciousness of
rectitude. "To us Germans," Professor Meyer
says, "the state is the most indispensable as well
as the highest requisite of our earthly existence.
. . . The state is of much higher importance than
any individual groups, and eventually is of infi-
nitely more value than the sum of all the indi-
viduals within its jurisdiction." The reason
TRANSFIGURATION OF EMPIRE 139
given for this assertion is that the state "has a life
apart; its mission is unending; and, in theory at
least, unless it is wrecked by a force from without,
its existence is endless, encompassing as it does all
the generations yet to come, and welding them into
a great unit, — the mighty life of a nation acting
its part in the history of the world."
This is, in substance, the state as Hegel con-
ceived it, with the divinity left out. As now rep-
resented, the empire is a "splendidly creative
monarchy" possessed of absolute power, no longer
pretending to be divine, and confessedly very
narrowly human; for, as this theory of empire ex-
presses it, "the final decision in every measure
undertaken rests with the sovereign, who there-
fore assumes full responsibility for it, and no one
can relieve him of it." But as the sovereign in
this conception is the sole personal representative
of the state, and the state is of "infinitely more
value than the sum of all the individuals within
its jurisdiction," there is no one entitled to hold
him responsible, no standard by which to measure
his responsibility. If at his command millions
of men, no matter how many millions, are slain
in battle, since all human beings taken together
140 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
are of less importance than the power and pros-
perity of the empire, no wrong is committed; and
if there were a wrong, there would be no means
of preventing or even of condemning it. "In
this personal element," we are gravely assured,
"lies the tremendous advantage that a monarchial
government has over any other, in that it unites in
one person the power to act for the State, together
with the undivided responsibility to conscience for
the consequences of the act." And thus the con-
science of one man who holds himself accountable
to no one, but whose interest it is by any and all
means to extend his power, is made the measure
of the state's responsibility.
One has only to open the pages of the jurists
and philosophers of an earlier time, when the
German peoples and princes were struggling for
their local rights and liberties against the author-
ity of the old empire, and to reread the history of
the contests for the "Germanic liberties," then
held to be so dear, to realize how completely, even
since the time of Bismarck, the conception of the
German state has been transformed. What Ger-
mans for centuries have bitterly fought against
is now set forth as the highest and noblest achieve-
TRANSFIGURATION OF EMPIRE 141
ment of that race. In 1913, Prince von Billow
was saying, "The strong control exercised by the
authorities of Prussia has always evoked a par-
ticularly vigorous counter-movement among the
German people themselves." But if Professor
Eduard Meyer is right, that control is henceforth
to be regarded as the crowning glory of German
achievement. The triumph of German imperial-
ism, which at the time he wrote seemed to Pro-
fessor Meyer so certain, would in his opinion
create a condition in which the ultimate law for
the German people would be the conscience of the
German emperor. "The world in which we shall
find ourselves after peace has been concluded,"
he says, "will be totally different from the one
with which we have been familiar, even should
there be no outward change, no shifting of the
old-time boundary lines. This war is not only
the greatest war in the history of mankind, it is
the most epoch-making event of modern history.
The world as we knew it before August 1, 1914,
has ceased to be. What precedes that date seems
to belong to a remote past, so far removed from
us that we can hardly realize that we had a share
in it."
142 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
There can be no doubt that the world will
never be the same that it was on August 1, 1914,
when one man, responsible only to his own con-
science, plunged Europe into war; but what is
new and startling in Professor Meyer's concep-
tion of the future is the intended transformation
in the idea of the German Empire which it re-
veals. From its inception the empire was with-
out doubt an autocratic structure with enormously
centralized powers ; but neither its author, Prince
von Bismarck, nor its apologist, Prince von
Biilow, in their most rapturous moments of devo-
tion to their sovereigns would have called it "a
splendid creative monarchy" in which the con-
science of the sovereign is the highest law of the
nation. Bismarck would have recalled that his
own acts in creating it were performed in a man-
ner that the conscience of William I certainly did
not inspire, and Biilow could not have forgot-
ten that in 1908 it was his function as imperial
chancellor to quiet the disturbance of the public
mind caused by the indiscreet utterances of Wil-
liam II in the Daily Telegraph interview, and to
pledge his own honor that he would not again
TRANSFIGURATION OF EMPIRE 143
permit the emperor to act without the responsible
advice of his councilors.
Before 1914 the constitution of the German
Empire was not interpreted as a monarchy, but as
a confederation of monarchies, which, in its own
terms, is "an eternal alliance for the protection of
the territory of the Confederation, and of the
rights of the same as well as the promotion of the
welfare of the German people." It is a confed-
eration of coordinate monarchs and three free
city-republics. "To the King of Prussia," reads
the eleventh article, "shall belong the presidency
of the Confederation, and he shall have the title
of German Emperor"; but he is nowhere referred
to as a monarch except in Prussia. His imperial
powers of control and appointment are very great,
especially in time of war, since "all German
troops are bound to render unconditional obedi-
ence to the commands of the Emperor"; but his
duties and powers, though broad, are neverthe-
less to some extent enumerated and defined.
They are quite definitely limited by the Bundes-
rat, and apparently, but not really, by the popu-
larly elected Reichstag, which is in effect a mere
144 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
debating society, which the Germans themselves
have named "The hall of echoes." It is of inter-
est to note, however, that the powers of the
Bundesrat and the Reichstag are specified in the
constitution before the presidency is even men-
tioned.
The truth is that the constitution of the Ger-
man Empire is, and probably was designed to be,
an extremely ambiguous document capable of be-
ing construed as creating a truly constitutional
government, but well adapted to such perversions
and usurpations of power as an autocratic ruler,
especially in time of war and in absolute com-
mand of an immense and well-disciplined army,
might choose to make.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the war has
developed new interpretations of the imperial con-
stitution, and that in the hours of apparent vic-
tory the Byzantinism that even in time of peace
had become so conspicuous among the German
functionaries and aspirants to imperial favor
should be exaggerated, with the result of attribut-
ing to the emperor powers which the people never
supposed that he legally possessed; for, although
TRANSFIGURATION OF EMPIRE 145
it was the sovereigns and not the people of Ger-
many who made the constitution of the empire,
the people have assumed that it was made in their
interest and not for their enslavement.
The recent revelation that the war may not
bring forth a German victory has created a wide-
spread interest in the real meaning of the consti-
tution and a new desire for popular control of the
government. The German Empire is undoubt-
edly on the brink of changes which are at present
incalculable, for the character of these changes
will depend upon the eventualities of the war. A
German defeat would unquestionably result in
radical revision of the constitutional organization
of the empire and important restrictions upon the
powers of the emperor, not excluding a possibil-
ity of even more fundamental changes. If, on
the other hand, the Central Powers suffer no seri-
ous defeat, and especially if the plans of the Pan-
Germanists are in any important degree success-
ful, it is with this new conception of imperial au-
tocracy that the rest of the world will hereafter
have to contend. The complete triumph of the
Central Powers would mean the triumph of the
146 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
Prussian monarchy, and would confirm its su-
premacy over the entire German Empire and its
present allies.
It is of the highest importance to the peace of
the world to take into account the critical situa-
tion which is created for Europe by this new con-
ception which the war has generated of the Ger-
man Empire as "a splendid creative monarchy."
There is in this conception no repudiation of the
Pan-German plans of expansion. On the con-
trary, there is an explicit assertion that if they are
now destined to be defeated, the world's peace
will suffer for it, since nothing short of an im-
perial victory will prevent the prospect of future
wars. The "hammer and anvil" philosophy of
history is vigorously reasserted, and Germany in-
tends to be always the hammer and never the
anvil. "It is impossible," writes Professor
Meyer, "to pierce the veil that hides the future,
and to foretell that which will come to pass. Yet
even now every German must clearly discern that,
if the German nation would maintain its position
in the world, there are three things that we must
cleave to as the inviolable basis of our independ-
ent and vigorous existence." These, he says, are
TRANSFIGURATION OF EMPIRE 147
"our military organization, our economic organ-
ization, together with protection for our agricul-
tural industries, for by these the necessities of life
are assured to us and we are made independent
of supplies from abroad; and, lastly, a virile
monarchial government, wholly independent to
act, that it may be free to combine and utilize
in creative activity all the forces of which the na-
tion is capable. For the beneficent results of this
activity we had every reason to be grateful," he
concludes, "when the outbreak of the war found
us fully supplied with material and thoroughly
prepared, while every day that the war continues
gives us renewed evidence of its efficiency."
It is, in fact, the efficiency of the German Em-
pire in war, its perfection as a form of power, that
constitutes its great merit in this writer's eyes, for
the end of the state is power, not only creative and
constructive power, but destructive power as well.
"The truth of the whole matter undoubtedly is,"
he says, "that the time has arrived when two dis-
tinct forms of state organization" — the German
and the English — ''must face each other in a
struggle for life or death." They cannot, it
148 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
seems, longer live together in the same world.
It is then with this new Germany, if she is vic-
torious — always prepared for war, trusting only
to the sword, believing in the necessity of future
wars, bent on "creative activity" in the develop-
ment of her "vigorous existence," under the com-
mand of "one man wholly independent to act,"
and opposed to internationalism, — that, if this
interpretation of imperial purpose is correct, the
other nations of the earth will have to live. If
there is to be peace, Germany contends, it must
be a peace imposed by the conqueror in which
other forms of state organization will have to
yield to imperial supremacy. Such is the claim,
and such is the boast.
Certainly, this is not the old Germany that we
knew and loved, the teacher of music and poetry,
science and philosophy, art and literature. A
thousand memories of kindly faces and sweet
voices and delicate attentions flood in upon our
minds as we compare the present with the past.
The land of song, the home of the humanities,
the embodiment of Gemiitlichkeit, are they really
gone forever? And what has any one done to
Germany that she should now wish to estrange
TRANSFIGURATION OF EMPIRE 149
herself from all the world? Does she really re-
pudiate internationalism? Hereafter will there
be in the world no welcome ports for her great
fleets of merchantmen as of old? Shall we not
again sail the wide ocean with her great captains ?
Shall we not learn again of the great masters who
have been our teachers? Tear out that page,
Professor Meyer, and write it in another mood.
What can the German Empire expect of a world
in which there is no internationalism? What is
to be its place among the nations? And whose
fault is it that there is to be no internationalism?
Who has been the first to violate treaties ? Who
has been the first to decline to let Europe decide
what was from its very nature a European ques-
tion? Who first declared war in the midst of
negotiations? Who first proceeded not against
an enemy in arms, but against an unarmed and
neutralized people? Who first challenged all
neutrals by a campaign of frightfulness in which
innocent non-combatants, men, women, and even
little children, were shattered into fragments by
explosions, or mercilessly drowned in the sea?
Is the right to live in the world a question for the
conscience of one man ? Shall the burden of guilt
ISO THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
in the struggle for empire be made to rest upon
one human being and not fall also upon those
who have intended to profit by it? And, finally,
can it be expected that the world will remain
friendly with a nation that organizes assassina-
tion as a means to power?
We may as well frankly recognize the fact first
as last, that German imperial aggression does not
grow entirely out of the adoration of a dynasty
nor out of its compulsion, nor is it purely the re-
sult of a philosophic theory of the state. It is
because dynasties serve national purposes that
they are invested with peculiar sanctity, and it is
because an imperial government can increase the
power of a people over other peoples that the aid
of philosophy is invoked to sustain its prestige.
When we appeal to history the evidence of this is
overwhelming. What has reconciled Germany
to the overlordship of Prussia is the material ad-
vantages that have been derived from German
unity. For the wave of conquest, which orig-
inally proceeded from the Mark Brandenburg
and derived the name of Prussia (Bo-Russia)
from the annexation of a Slavic province of Po-
TRANSFIGURATION OF EMPIRE 151
land obtained by a union of war and diplomacy,
there is no sentiment of reverence in the German
heart. The Germans know too well their own
history. An empire ruled by Prussia would have
been repudiated in the first decades of its exist-
ence had it not brought extensive economical ad-
vantages to all the German states. This it un-
doubtedly has done, and the appreciation of it is
heightened by the expectation that the centralized
power of a unified Germany will procure further
gains to the German people, new employment for
their labor, new markets for their goods, new re-
sources for their; exploitation. The Pan-Ger-
manist program is not really founded on race
affinity or sentiment of any kind. It aims at the
extension of the empire because it is regarded as
a fruitful tree, the growth of which will not only
cast a protecting shade, but bear rich fruits for
the German people.
This aspect of German imperialism is well
illustrated in such works as Dr. Friedrich Nau-
mann's "Central Europe" ("Mittel-Europa")
and Professor Harms on "Germany's Share in the
World's Trade"; the latter manifesting a very
lively sense of the economic importance to Ger-
152 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
many of international trade, and of the disadvan-
tage that would be incurred if foreign markets
were lost to her.
It is Dr. Naumann, however, whose circle of
readers is very wide and whose authority as a
popular writer and as a member of the Reichstag
is very great, who best interprets the dominat-
ing thought in current German political plans
for the future. Writing in the midst of war and
under the inspiration of war, he presents to us
his vision of a new Central Europe great enough
and strong enough to hold an undisputed place
in the midst of permanently hostile nations, giv-
ing to Deutschtum a rock-ribbed security in which
to abide its time for that military development
and that economic expansion to which he believes
that the German peoples are entitled. Only in
the midst of war, it is contended, could the mind
be prepared to comprehend the need and the im-
port of such a vast conception; for Mittel-Europa
— the further extended, further energized, and
further fortified Teutonic empire of the future —
could never even be conceived by the ordinary
every-day spirit. "As Bismarck, in the midst
of the war of 1870 and not after it had ended, be-
TRANSFIGURATION OF EMPIRE 153
held a vision of the German Empire," he writes,
"so in the midst of war, in the flowing of blood
and the commotion of peoples, will be laid by our
statesmen the foundations of the new construc-
tion."
What then is this new imperial edifice to in-
clude? It is, in the words of its projector, to
consist in nothing less than "the coalescence of
those states which belong neither to the Anglo-
French Alliance nor to the Russian Empire; but,
above all, the combination of the German Empire
and the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy, since
all further plans for the uniting of the Central
European peoples depend upon the success at-
tending the union of the two Central States."
The necessity for this union, Naumann thinks,
is absolute, for the reason that the day for the
role of small states in history is forever past. In
the old Europe the small states had a natural
place. Germany was entirely composed of them,
but, always discordant, they presented a shifting
picture of struggling princes, each actuated by
his own interest and rarely forming combinations
of historical significance. Like clouds they sud-
denly gathered and as suddenly were dissipated.
154 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
The so-called Holy Roman Empire of the Ger-
man Nation, in which the German states nomi-
nally existed, was under the house of Hapsburg
utterly devoid of unity, the greater half nearly
always subject to foreign influence insinuated un-
der the pretense of protecting them against the
authority of the empire of which they formed a
part.
To-day, under the pressure of a common hos-
tility, the German Empire, unified by Prussia,
and the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy, feel-
ing their common necessity of cooperation, are
aware of being united in a struggle for their ex-
istence. No longer is separatism to be defended.
War has created a Central European soul, which
must now, he thinks, take on a body fitted to its
needs.
But it is not a mere temporary exigency that
has brought about this result. Great business
has necessitated great politics, and the organiza-
tion of the state must correspond to them. We
must, says Naumann, as Cecil Rhodes expressed
it, "think in continents." Sovereignty in any
real sense can hardly any longer be ascribed to
the little peoples. Without allies they are noth-
TRANSFIGURATION OF EMPIRE 155
ing. Isolation is weakness and danger. Even
Prussia, alone, is too small for a modern state.
"The State," Treitschke taught, "is power"; and
he added, "There is something laughable in the
idea of a small State." No doubt amidst the
battle of giants it may seem laughable for the
physically feeble to demand freedom or even jus-
tice, and yet, as has been well said, "there is
something unpardonably brutal in such laugh-
ter." There being no historical role for the small
states according to this philosophy, they do not
enter at all into the groundwork of Central Eu-
rope. They would prove too independent, too
refractory, and certainly too feebly inspired by
the imperial spirit, to be combined in the active
and potent nucleus of power required for the real-
ization of this great political conception. Italy,
if it were more amenable to Teutonic influence,
might be an acceptable acquisition; but, at pres-
ent, it is too Latin in its affinities to be incor-
porated in the body of Central Europe. Like
Holland, Switzerland, the Balkan States, Tur-
key and the Scandinavian countries, Italy is on
the whole too peripheral to form a vital organ in
this new organism. All these countries, despite
156 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
the greatly enhanced quantitative conception of
the modern state as a great power, "since they still
have before them historical waiting-time for their
decision," are to be held for the time being in
solution. The first and pressing necessity is to
create that nucleus of Central Europe — the com-
bination of the German Empire and Austria-
Hungary — around which the little states may
ultimately crystallize; for these, Naumann thinks,
when they once "see with open eyes" what their
future position will be, will one by one seek safety
and advantage by adhering to the Central Powers.
Such, in outline, is Naumann's program for
the future. It is a program only, but it is one
upon which he expends a lavish art in order to
give it all possible attractiveness.
In his estimation, the critical moment, will be
in the negotiations for peace. What the terms of
peace will be he prudently does not attempt to
say; but whatever they are, "whether the outer
limits of the central empires of Middle Europe
are to be bent somewhat more toward the West
or toward the East, upon the ground of military
triumph, the question in all circumstances re-
TRANSFIGURATION OF EMPIRE 157
mains : whether the plenipotentiaries from Berlin,
Vienna, and Budapest leave the hall of the Peace
Congress as clear, true friends or as secret
enemies." "We wish," he continues, "that they
return to their peoples with the solution: 'Eter-
nally undivided.' "
In that case no doubt Europe will enter upon
a period of development differing widely from
the past. But will that union be achieved ? No
one better than the projector of Central Europe
understands that the answer to the question can
not be certain. "All wars of coalition since re-
mote antiquity," he says, "have been attended
with difficult conclusions of peace, for they have
always ended with gains and losses that must be
reconciled with one another." Such a peace as
that of 1815 at the Congress of Vienna, Naumann
insists, must not be repeated. The one really
great trophy of the war will be wrapped up in the
question of permanent union. If the Austro-
Hungarian Monarchy and the German Empire
can be kept asunder, that will be for the En-
tente Powers a great and permanent victory. If,
on the other hand, they unite to form a new
Central Europe, the sons of Germany and
158 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
Austria-Hungary, he thinks, will not have died in
vain.
It is not, however, a general reorganization of
national life and a better assurance of general
peace that are expected from the coalescence of
the Central empires. It is rather their mutual
defense and a quicker and firmer preparation for
new military emergencies. In the negotiations
for peace, it is admitted, each of the belligerents
will seek its freedom as well as its advantage;
but, insists Naumann, "it is an unhistorical form
of apprehension if one believes that five or eight
Great Powers will leave the hall of the Peace
Congress without already having new treaties in
their pockets." In any case, it will not, he
thinks, be the beginning of everlasting peace.
There will be pacific endeavors and perhaps new
assurances; but there will remain unsettled an
incredible number of new as well as old questions
that will awaken solicitude for the future. "All
the ministries of war, all the general staffs, all
the admiralties," Naumann contends, "will re-
flect upon the lessons of the war when it is over;
a still more scientific technique will invent new
weapons; the frontier strongholds will be made
TRANSFIGURATION OF EMPIRE 159
broader and more extended." And the inference
from all this is that no single state can remain
alone. The German Empire and the Austro-
Hungarian Monarchy, if they are to survive, he
urges, must combine for their mutual safety and
support.
This necessity arises in part from their terri-
torial unity, viewed from an orographical point
of view. Nature, from the North Sea and the
Baltic to the Alps, the Adriatic, and the southern
plain of the Danube, has so ordained it. "Open
the map," says Naumann, "and see what lies be-
tween the Vistula and the Vosges, what between
Galicia and the Bodensee! This area can be
conceived only as a unit, as a well-articulated
brother-land, as a confederation of defense, as a
self-sufficing economic district. Here must all
historic particularism in the stress of the world-
war so far vanish that it confirms the idea of
unity."
And as unity is favored, so must it be perma-
nently secured by physical conditions. What
these conditions are the war has revealed. The
best-established result of a technical military
character is that in the future fighting will be
160 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
only in long-drawn-out lines, and trenches will
furnish the basis of the defense of the Father-
land. The policy of the trench consists in this,
that every state must calculate within what
limits it can or cannot establish its trench-de-
fense position. Had the French entrenched them-
selves from Belfort to Dunkirk, it is asserted, the
invasion of France through Belgium would prob-
ably have proved impossible. The same, it is
insisted, holds good for the East Prussian and
Austro-Galician frontiers. After the war fron-
tier entrenchments will everywhere be erected
where the possibilities of war are present. New
Chinese walls must arise if the nations are to live
in friendship. Two long walls from north to
south will divide the European continent into
three strips. The Middle European question is
whether between the walls running north and
south still another between Germany and Aus-
tria-Hungary will be needed. Naumann urges
that if the unity of future policies is not secured,
the necessity will be imperative; but, if thus ren-
dered necessary, it will be in the highest degree
injurious and full of evil portent for both sides.
Inclusion or exclusion — these are the alterna-
TRANSFIGURATION OF EMPIRE 161
tives offered to Austria by this new system of for-
tified insularity, here presented as the only possi-
ble method of securing friendly relations. What
is it that demands these insurmountable barriers
between nation and nation? Is it utter de-
spair of all moral and legal means of reconcilia-
tion between them? Whence, then, this inerad-
icable incompatibility between the nations east
and west of these mural barricades? What is
it that makes it necessary for all the future to
part them by impassable and eternally guarded
moats? It is, apparently, that Central Europe
may be thus established as a consolidated Teu-
tonic power rendered forever independent of those
voluntary concessions, adjustments, and agree-
ments by which contiguous peoples have hitherto
regulated their conduct. But why should a na-
tion seek this exemption from the ordinary con-
ditions of human existence in a social state? Is
it merely as a means of defense? Is it to pre-
serve from violation the sacred principle of na-
tionality? Is it to maintain intact a pure and
disinterested neutrality in the midst of a warring
world?
Not one of these last mentioned considerations
162 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
is advanced as a reason for this consolidation and
immurement. There is no discussion even of
the possible basis of pacific readjustments, no
proposal to restore autonomy to the suppressed
nationalities in the German and Austro-Hungar-
ian realms, no thought whatever for the Poles,
Czechs, Rumanians, and others already immured
within these empires, no reference to neutrality
except to point out that the trench policy will
render it more difficult for the small states to
remain neutral, and thus will tend to draw them
into the circle of the Central Powers. It is as-
sumed throughout that the only possible bonds
of union and the only possible conditions of
friendly relationship are of a purely mechanical
nature. The little states, it is emphasized, be-
ing incapable of the system of entrenchment on
account of its cost and their natural environment,
will be left without defense, and therefore will
constitute available raw material for further
economic exploitation. When Central Europe is
organized and fortified those states that, to use
Naumann's words, "belong neither to the Anglo-
French Confederation nor to the Russian Em-
pire" are to fall like ripe fruit, without effort
TRANSFIGURATION OF EMPIRE 163
or sacrifice on the part of the new imperial union,
into its outstretched hands.
With almost anxious particularity it is insisted
that no such thought as this antedated the war
either at Berlin or Vienna, much less entered into
the causation of it. In the German Empire, it
is frankly stated, existed the thought that some-
time there must come an accounting with Russia,
and also that sometime there must be a fight with
England concerning sea power. These eventuali-
ties, he admits, were already prepared for in the
mind of the German Government and of the
German people. The new development was that
there suddenly and unexpectedly rushed together
as in a mighty flood the war with Russia, the
war with France, and the war on the sea. In
the war with France and the war on the sea Aus-
tria-Hungary had no part, but with very press-
ing Balkan, Slav, and Italian perils. Thus two
great interests unexpectedly blended, and the
three wars became virtually one. Nevertheless,
owing to this duality of origin, the conflict has
had a different aspect as seen from Vienna,
Budapest, and Berlin. At first the idea of com-
mon statehood and common responsibility in all
164 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
directions was wanting; but the war has generated
it and has proved that it is not merely a German
war or a Danube war, but the historical test of
Central Europe.
"The war unites!" exclaims Naumann; but
he comprehends fully what contrarieties are to
be blended, what antagonisms are to be overcome
if Central Europe is to emerge from the struggle
as a political unit. He acknowledges that Aus-
tria-Hungary is filled with particularism and the
strife of partly submerged nationalities, while
Germany is a new unity tending toward further
centralization. Germany, from a loose confed-
eration, has become a federal state ; Austria-Hun-
gary is a confederacy formed of independent, but
conventionally united, monarchies. Germany, it
is noted, is more northern, colder, more uniform,
more technical; Austria-Hungary more southern,
gayer, more temperamental, more romantic. Ger-
many is for the most part Protestant, Austria-
Hungary for the most part Catholic. Austria-
Hungary possesses more of the past, and perhaps
more of the future, but Germany more of the
present. The rhythm of life is different. It is
as if east and west, north and south, the eighteenth
TRANSFIGURATION OF EMPIRE 165
century and the twentieth century were all to be
melted together.
Whatever the contradictions of nature or in-
clination, concludes Naumann, the future exist-
ence of the two empires depends upon their union.
Neither has any other possible ally upon whom
it can with confidence depend. Their combina-
tion is therefore a reciprocal necessity.
Of the two, the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy
contains the greater quantity of racial diversi-
ties and nationalist aspirations ; yet this may not
prove a cause of disruption, for union with a
strong power is essential to the existence of these
submerged nationalities. The Czechs, Morav-
ians, Poles, Serbs, Croats and Slovaks, and even
the Magyars alone, would be too feeble to main-
tain their national independence in isolation.
From the nature of things, it is asserted, their
future contentions are bound to be in the sphere
of domestic rather than in that of foreign poli-
tics. Only under the protection and by the in-
dulgence of their alleged oppressors could they
indulge in patriotic declamation. Tolerance
would be less dangerous and perhaps less neces-
sary in the projected new Central Europe, for
166 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
Prussian advice and, if needed, Prussian assist-
ance, would be at hand to complete the process of
absorption and assimilation. Having Prussian-
ized Germany, what would forbid the ultimate
Prussianization of all Central Europe? Are not
the Prussians themselves of Slavic origin?
There is, in fact, in this great scheme of em-
pire, an almost ostentatious suppression of
Deutschland uber Alles. The project does not
disclose, except by inference, the holy mission of
German Kultur in the redemption of the world.
On the contrary, there is, in appearance at least,
no emphasis of nationality. For this there are
obvious reasons. "It is, of course, understood,"
says Naumann, "that in belligerent Germany all
our old heroic memories rise up from the grave,
and we behold brought before us the Prussian
King Frederick II, Moltke, and Bismarck. We
struggle as Germans, but we struggle together
with millions of non-Germans, who are prepared
to go with us in battle and in death, if they are
respected by us, and if they are permitted to be-
lieve that our victory is at the same time their
victory."
It is chiefly upon this belief and the sense of
TRANSFIGURATION OF EMPIRE 167
freely acting together that reliance is placed for
the constitution of Central Europe. That is why
a political union is deemed possible in time of
war that would be utterly impossible in a time
of peace. It is not considered as at all an affair
of chancelleries or parliaments. It could not be
secured by merely formal treaties. In such en-
gagements there is always too little or too much,
and there is and can be, Naumann thinks, no as-
surance that mere treaties will always be respected.
It is in the actual identity of aim and aspiration
of peoples, not in the artificial agreements of
cabinets, that a true bond of union must be
sought. "Security," he says, "lies in the many-
sidedness of political, economic, and personal liv-
ing together; in the spontaneous and organized
overflow of one body politic into the other ; in the
community of ideas, of history, of culture, of
labor, of conceptions of right, — of a thousand
great and small things. Only when we reach this
condition, shall we be firmly bound together."
There is deep insight in this conception of the
prerequisites of union. Nothing fruitful can be
hoped for from any form of human government or
from any political and especially any interna-
168 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
tional combination that is not founded upon the
character, the interests, and the aims of those
affected by it. It is, therefore, timely for Aus-
tro-Hungarians to consider whether a union that
confessedly could be conceived only in a time
of war is the most advantageous for the dual mon-
archy in a time of peace.
It is evident that Austria-Hungary is the weak
point in the Pan-German scheme of southeastern
expansion. Without the practical subordination
of the dual monarchy to the control of the Im-
perial German Government the dream of a Ham-
burg-to-Bagdad railroad, with German ports on
all the southern seas, vanishes into thin air. It
is for this reason that Naumann has written his
book, for he comprehends perfectly that, left to
themselves, neither Austria nor Hungary, much
less the latter, can be easily persuaded to regard
the scheme of union which he urges as conform-
able either to their character, their interest, or
their national aims, for it would clearly involve
their ultimate extinction as separate nations. It
is doubtful if they could be voluntarily induced to
enter into so close a partnership with so predom-
inant a partner as the Imperial German Govern-
TRANSFIGURATION OF EMPIRE 169
ment. Already there are signs of restlessness un-
der existing Prussian control. The Austro-Hun-
garian response to the project of a Central Eu-
rope under Prussian headship has thus far not
been encouraging to Berlin. For this reason, in
order to realize the Hamburg-to-Bagdad hege-
mony, with the control which this involves, the
Imperial German Government would, no doubt,
gladly free its hands for the purpose of enforcing
this result by surrendering for the present every
advantage thus far obtained in the west, with the
intention of later recovering all that would be
temporarily abandoned in France and Belgium.
The fate not only of Austria-Hungary and their
submerged nationalities, but that of Greece, the
Balkan States, the Ottoman Empire, and even
that of Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, and the
Scandinavian kingdoms, will be determined by
the settlement of this Mid-European question.
Once organized, as German science and skill
could organize the Central Europe that Naumann
has delineated, it would not only become the over-
lord of the entire European continent, but the most
formidable maritime power that has ever existed.
It is this dream of dominating Europe that has
170 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
inspired the Imperial German Government, on
the one hand, to propose negotiations for peace,
and, on the other, vigorously to continue the war
in the hope that one or another of its opponents
may be eliminated from the conflict. It is this
also that furnishes the ground for the hostility to
internationalism. German economic imperial-
ism is as little inclined as the Prussian dynasty to
take a place in the world regulated by general
agreements. "We never concealed our doubts
that peace could be guaranteed permanently by
international organizations such as arbitration
courts," said the imperial chancellor, Bethmann-
Hollweg, in speaking to a committee of the Reich-
stag; and his attitude on this subject has com-
manded virtually universal assent in Germany.
There is something disconcerting to the rest of
the world in this fierce spirit of Teutonic tribal-
ism that seems not even to desire a wider friend-
ship. The disposition to reject all international
relations, the dependence on mechanical, eco-
nomic, and military force, and the total absence
of the humanism which characterized the old
Germany that we knew and loved — it is these
things that render this transfigured German Em-
TRANSFIGURATION OF EMPIRE 171
pire weird and strange and at the same time for-
midable — like a giant caveman, dwelling apart,
toiling in his waking hours in preparation for
battle, and in his sleep dreaming of enemies and
hostilities, as the chief preoccupations of exist-
ence.
CHAPTER VI
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION
NOTWITHSTANDING the German dis-
trust of arbitration courts, Chancellor von
Bethmann-Hollweg has pointed out the conclusion
at which all human intelligence must arrive when
it devotes itself to a serious examination of in-
ternational relations. He says:
If at and after the end of the war the world will only
become fully conscious of the horrifying destruction of life
and property, then through the whole of humanity there
will ring a cry for peaceful arrangements and under-
standings which, as far as they are within human power,
will prevent the return of such a monstrous catastrophe.
This cry will be so powerful and so justified that it must
lead to some result.
What then is that result to be? It cannot be
the domination of any single nation. That is a
form of peace to which the world will not sub-
mit.
172
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION 173
If men were ruled by pure intelligence, it would
not be difficult to make a permanent end of war
and its devastations; but experience has shown
that neither those who govern nor those who are
governed are purely intellectual beings. There
is in the nature of every man, and hence in the
composition of every nation, an element of rea-
son; but there are also instincts, emotions, and
passions. Some of these arise from the limita-
tions and necessities of nature as a complex of
active forces governed by the great laws of strug-
gle, selection, and survival. In addition to these
there are also fortuitous associations of ideas,
tribal traditions, and inherent prejudices that
have their origin outside the sphere of conscious
mental processes. Nations as well as men have
their inheritance of natural traits which assimi-
late them to different species of animals, such as
the wolf, the fox, and the lamb. In consequence,
the probable conduct of certain races of men may
be made the subject of calculation almost as cer-
tain as that resulting from the study of the in-
stinctive life of birds and beasts upon which su-
perior intelligence bases its powers of capture
and control.
174 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
In the seclusion of their studies, philosophers,
beginning with a few a priori principles of rea-
son, find it an easy task to construct in their minds
a universal state, or so to conceive the relations
of separate states to one another as to conclude
that nothing is simpler than to realize an ulti-
mate federation of the world. On the contrary,
those who have been close observers of human
nature and especially those who have come in
contact with many varied populations in many
different countries find it difficult to believe that
either a universal state or a perfect harmony of all
separate states will ever be possible unless human
nature is radically changed. They perceive the
fatalities in national existence which prevent the
triumph of international ideals, and they wonder
how other men of great intelligence can fancy
that a plan of cooperation is, in effect, almost ac-
complished simply because it has been consistently
and logically thought out.
As a result of the present European conflict
and its revelation of national aims and purposes,
there will, no doubt, be urged upon all nations a
deeper consideration of the causes of international
strife, and elaborate plans will be proposed for
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION 175
securing more perfect international harmony.
Unquestionably the moral sense of all intelligent
men will be profoundly stirred, and the iniquity
as well as the irrationality of war between civil-
ized nations will be deeply impressed upon them.
But this will not be a new experience. In mod-
ern times the atrocities accompanying great wars
have never failed to call forth projects for a thor-
oughgoing reorganization of the world. Thus it
was that in the midst of the Thirty Years' War,
Emeric Cruce proposed that Venice be chosen as
the permanent seat of a corps of ambassadors
whose votes should settle all international differ-
ences. It was during the "Robber Wars" of
Louis XIV that William Penn, whom Montes-
quieu called "the modern Lycurgus," propounded
his plans for universal peace. It was at the con-
clusion of the struggle for the Spanish succession
that Fenelon presented to the Congress of Utrecht
his famous dissertation, in which he said :
Neighboring states are not only under obligation to treat
one another according to the rules of justice and good
faith; they ought in addition, for their own safety, as
well as for the common interest, to form a kind of general
society and republic.
176 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
It was upon the same occasion that the Abbe
de Saint-Pierre elaborated his extension of Sully's
alleged "Grand Design," in which — anticipating
the purpose of the present program of the League
to Enforce Peace — he proposed not only the sub-
mission of differences to judicial decision, but the
total abolition of the separate use of force, and
the agreement that in case of a refusal to observe
treaties or to obey rules and judgments imposed
the other members of the alliance should compel a
refractory sovereign to comply by arming unitedly
against him and charging to his account the ex-
pense of this forcible constraint. It was during
Napoleon Bonaparte's conquest of Italy that Im-
manuel Kant published his famous essay on
"Eternal Peace."
It would be tedious to examine or even to re-
state the numerous schemes that have been pro-
posed for insuring peace and harmony among the
nations. Almost without exception they have as-
sumed that the basis of reorganization is exclu-
sively political, and that there must therefore be
instituted what is equivalent to a superstate, a
new sovereignty set above the national state as
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION 177
this is set over its constituent members. For this
purpose it has been considered by many necessary
to establish not only an international legislature
and an international judiciary, but also an in-
ternational executive in command of armies and
navies or at least controlling such an armed force
as would constitute an effective international
police, but generally without a very clear notion of
what its extent would have to be.
It is advisable to dismiss at the outset such a
futility as this superstate would be. A universal
world state of this description would imply the
sudden annihilation of all the national charac-
teristics that differentiate, for example, Turkey
from Switzerland, or France from the German
Empire. The proposal to federate such dispar-
ate political units would invoke prompt resist-
ance on every hand.
Only approximately identical types of govern-
ment are eligible for any real international or-
ganization, which in order to constitute an organ-
ism must be composed of mutually adaptable
organs. In brief, the component parts must be
expressions of a common life. Absolute and con-
stitutional states do not belong to the same species
178 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
of bodies politic. There is between them an in-
herent hostility. An attempt to unite them in a
league to enforce peace would result in generating
new causes of war. This attempt has already
been made, and it ended in dismal failure. The
Holy Alliance was organized to sustain the high-
est international ideals of the signatory powers,
having "No other object than to publish, in the
face of the whole world, their fixed resolution,
both in the administration of their respective
States, and in their political relations with every
other Government, to take for their sole guide the
precepts of the holy religion our Saviour teaches,
namely the precepts of Justice, Christian Charity,
and Peace." Yet Great Britain and France could
not enter into this alliance, which had for its
real object to secure tranquillity by crushing out
all movements toward national independence and
constitutional development. As Alison Phillips
has clearly shown in his work on "The Confedera-
tion of Europe," "the effective working of an in-
ternational federal system demands a far greater
uniformity of political institutions and ideas
among the nations of the world than at present
exists."
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION 179
The fundamental difference between states, as
has already been pointed out, is to be found in the
conception of sovereignty. In the case of the con-
stitutional states there has been a limitation of
the power of the sovereign, and in the great democ-
racies there has been some modification in the
conception of sovereignty itself. In the United
States, for example, there has been much dispute
regarding the question whether sovereignty be-
longs to the Federal Government or to the sepa-
rate States. The truth is that in its absolute
sense of unlimited power it belongs to neither,
not even to the people, whose expressed convic-
tions on the subject constitute a declaration that
government exists only "to secure the rights of
the governed," and is therefore essentially limited.
This is the doctrine of the Declaration of Inde-
pendence and of all the bills of rights, in which
the idea of sovereignty has no explicit recogni-
tion; and this word, which the American system
would never have invented, has been made the
subject of extended discussion with the result
that while some authority is seen to belong to
the Federal Government and some to the state
governments, their relation is one of coordination
180 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
and not one of unqualified and absolute su-
premacy. In international affairs it has never
been seriously pretended that the authority of the
United States in any respect exceeds what, as the
Declaration of Independence expresses it, "in-
dependent States may of right do."
It is evident that autocratic powers, basing their
authority upon the postulates of absolutism, will
not and logically cannot accept this view of es-
sentially limited state authority and the conse-
quent existence of inherent and binding interna-
tional obligations, for the reason that these limi-
tations and obligations are from their point of
view encroachments upon the unlimited will of
the sovereign.
It may be said that these limitations and ob-
ligations cease to be encroachments when they
are freely and explicitly accepted by the sover-
eign, and that, therefore, obligations, when thus
accepted, are as binding between absolute govern-
ments as between constitutional governments.
But this observation evades the fundamental is-
sue which is whether there are any obligations
growing out of the essential nature of the state
that should control the relations and conduct of
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION 181
sovereign states that they may not by an arbitrary
act of will reject; for if there are obligations that
are inherently binding between them because of
the nature of the state, a state, though sovereign,
cannot be free to reject them; but if, on the con-
trary, as the absolutist theory of the state con-
tends, the sovereignty of the state is unlimited,
such a state is bound only by its will, which is
casual and changeable. Its will to reject an
obligation is as absolute as its will to accept
it.
It is, therefore, only through a modification of
the idea of absolute sovereignty that any hope can
be found for the permanent and pacific organi-
zation of mankind. Unless we start out with the
postulate that the state is founded upon the in-
herent rights of its citizens, and therefore reaches
its limits of authority where their collective rights
of safety and possession end, we shall have no
constructive principle upon which to base a better
organization of the world. The right of arbi-
trary aggressive force once admitted, no matter
how noble and elevated its aims may be, im-
perialism has triumphed; and, if imperialism is
182 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
to triumph, it will create its own rules of action in
defiance of international law.
As the basis of any practicable scheme of world
organization, it is necessary to lay down the post-
ulate that every free community of men may form
a government for the protection of their inher-
ent rights. But this fundamental political right,
which we call by the ambiguous name "sover-
eignty" is by no means an unlimited right. It is
necessarily limited by the similar right of other
coexistent communities; and from the constitu-
tional point of view it is further limited by the
fact that there are inherent personal rights which
no government may justly take away.
It is, therefore, utterly useless to expect that
any plan of international government that will
be really effective can be successfully carried into
practice with governments that adhere to the ab-
solute conception of sovereignty. No treaty can
bind them, for they always reserve the right to
break it whenever they consider it in their interest
to do so. No international law can control
them, for they will not admit that it is law unless
it is an absolute decree of sovereign power. No
congress or conference can overrule them, for
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION 183
these, in their view, possess no authority. All
contractual relations entered into with powers
which hold themselves not subject to moral law
are therefore written in running water. They
have no value whatever. What can be expected
of a power that claims to possess an unlimited
right of national expansion, restrained only by
the extent of its ability to carry its projects into
execution by an assault upon its neighbors ? The
polite expression for this exalted privilege is "lib-
erty of national evolution." But what does lib-
erty of national evolution mean if not freedom to
do what a particular nation desires to do with-
out the restraint of the collective interests of other
powers and the limitations imposed by fixed prin-
ciples of law?
It is evident, then, that any effective form of
international government implies the renuncia-
tion, to some extent at least, of absolute sover-
eignty. To what extent must this renunciation
be carried? Certainly not to the extent of ad-
mitting interference in the purely domestic affairs
of a state. But it must be accepted to a degree
that will allow of bringing to bear upon the im-
portant relations of states to one another, — that
184 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
is, upon strictly international questions, — the col-
lective judgment of at least a group of states hav-
ing an interest in those questions.
Here, undoubtedly, have to be made two dis-
criminations: (1) between questions which are
strictly internal to the separate states and strictly
international questions; and (2) between the
powers capable of uniting together upon terms of
equality for the consideration of questions purely
international and those that will not submit to a
collective decision.
It may often be difficult to distinguish between
what is merely domestic and what is properly
speaking international in the action of sovereign
powers. The great powers have in the past not
hesitated to interfere in matters of a wholly do-
mestic character in the case of the weaker states,
as, for example, with administrative reforms in
Turkey, and with customs tariffs in China.
Such interference is beyond question an infringe-
ment upon sovereignty. It can be justified only
when it is intended to suppress a domestic condi-
tion that unjustly affects the rights of foreign
powers, such as a state of anarchy, inhuman bar-
barity, or a persistent form of maladministration.
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION 185
When, on the other hand, it aims at extorting a
commercial advantage, it has no justification. It
is natural, therefore, that small and weak states,
feeling themselves liable to such abuses by
stronger powers, should dread any form of inter-
national control that might unjustly infringe upon
their sovereignty. It would be necessary, there-
fore, in framing an international constitution in-
tended as the legal authorization of an interna-
tional government, to mark out very clearly the
limits within which it could act, and thus to pro-
tect the weaker states from the intervention of
the stronger.
It is evident, also, that the formation of a gen-
eral union for purposes of legislation, judicial
judgment, and executive action would involve
grave problems. While all independent states,
regardless of size and power, are in law juristi-
cally equal, they are not materially equal either
in a military or an economic sense. If, there-
fore, representation in international bodies — leg-
islative, judicial, and executive — were equal, it
would involve a certain subjection of the great
powers to the will of the small states to which
they would not willingly submit. If, on the other
186 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
hand, representation were proportioned to wealth,
population, extent of territory, or any other simi-
lar standard, the smaller states would feel that
they were in danger of being subordinated by
their more powerful neighbors. Finally, there
would be an inherent incompatibility between the
absolute and the constitutional powers, the for-
mer being indisposed to bind themselves to the re-
strictions that would necessarily be placed upon
them by general principles of law, and the latter
being uncertain whether or not they could depend
upon the good faith of powers whose political
systems were in principle opposed to any external
restraints — restraints which at a critical moment
they might in perfect consistency with their abso-
lute theory of the state suddenly decide to re-
nounce.
We are brought, therefore, boldly to dismiss
the pretension that a general international gov-
ernment is either possible or desirable. Such an
organization would of necessity include both great
and small states, empires and democracies, pow-
ers with unsatisfied world-wide ambitions and
petty sovereignties just emerging from semi-bar-
barism, and among them aspirants to nationality
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION 187
virtually only on the ragged edge of statehood,
yet claiming the right to possess an equal voice in
an international body, but in reality the mere
vassals or protectorates of great powers.
Would it not, in fact, appear that the most that
could reasonably be expected in the form of an
international organization fit to legislate and ex-
ercise judicial functions would, at least in the
beginning, be a strong, but limited, group of
powers, each willing to sacrifice something of its
own sovereignty for the purpose of insuring peace
and equity, thus constituting a coherent force, not
upon the principle of the balance of power, but a
nucleus for the ultimate union of all responsible
and socially inclined nations? This, of course,
would have to be sufficiently powerful to defend
its members from attack and even able to offer
protection to the independence of the smaller
states desirous of entering into its compact. It
would not necessarily be a federation, which
would imply the creation of a new state, nor even
an alliance. It might be in substance merely the
formal recognition of the existence of a real, as
distinguished from a purely fictitious, society of
states based upon common intentions and a dec-
188 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
laration of definite principles of right which the
members were willing to accept, to observe, and
to defend.
Such a society of states as has just been out-
lined would, however, itself be a mere fiction of
the mind unless it possessed some kind of legis-
lative, judicial, and executive powers. But it is
quite possible that a society of states should in
some degree possess such powers without in real-
ity constituting a new state. The establishment
of new relations is not equivalent to the creation
of a new entity, and it is merely the establishment
of new relations that is here contemplated.
There would be no new sovereignty developed,
but merely the concurrent action of preexistent
sovereignties. For constitutional states there is
virtually no surrender of sovereign authority in
submitting to international law, because, being
themselves constituted for justice as the end of
their existence, international law contradicts noth-
ing essential to them. For an absolutist state,
however, the case is different. Pretending to
possess unlimited authority and finding the end
of its existence in augmenting its own power, the
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION 189
absolutist state does not regard itself as under ob-
ligation to accept any law that is not the declara-
tion of its own will.
Here is the explanation of why the Hague con-
ferences of 1889 and 1907 were nearly fruitless
as legislative bodies. They were, however, gen-
erally regarded as law-making assemblies, sub-
ject, of course, to veto by the refusal of the sepa-
rate states to ratify their conclusions. In the
first conference twenty-six states, and in the sec-
ond conference forty-four — these being all but
four of the independent states of the entire world
— united in making conventions intended to have
a universal and legal character, but these were of
an extremely limited nature because in both cases
the range of subjects was restricted by previous
agreement, entire unanimity was necessary in or-
der to secure adoption of each separate item by
the conference, and the conventions that had
braved and triumphed over all these discourage-
ments were still null and void for all the powers
that did not expressly ratify them. It is not sur-
prising, therefore, that the results were meager.
While these conferences prove that interna-
tional legislation is possible by an association of
190 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
sovereign powers, they also make evident what
is necessary to render it really fruitful. The
*first necessity is that strict unanimity must be
given up, and the nations must admit their ob-
ligation to obey such international rules as re-
ceive preponderant assent, not perhaps the assent
of a bare majority, but of a very large plurality.
This the absolutist governments will not do, for
they will accept no rule which involves any dis-
advantage to themselves, no matter how just it
may be. A constitutional state, on the other
hand, may accept any just rule without surrender-
ing any of its sovereign rights, for it claims no
rights which just legislation would endanger.
The primary problem therefore is how to or-
ganize an international conference, assembled to
perfect international law, in such a manner as to
prevent unjust or ex parte legislation. The only
practicable method, perhaps, is, first of all, by
negotiation between powers disposed to partici-
pate in such a conference and to be bound by it
to frame a constitution defining and limiting its
powers, and, since the procedure must of neces-
sity be experimental, to provide for its subse-
quent amendment, except as respects certain defi-
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION 191
nite and essential rights explicitly and per-
manently reserved to the states taking part in it.
Such a conference, for reasons already stated,
would not be universal. At The Hague it was
esteemed necessary that an international confer-
ence should be universal, and this was the reason
for requiring absolute unanimity and for the con-
sequent dread of isolating one or more of the
powers, which, therefore, were able to hold up the
conference on every vital question and thus pre-
vent the adoption of the measures most necessary
to the peace and safety of the world.
While unanimity is most desirable, it is ab-
surd to insist that some one recalcitrant power,
even though a great one, may virtually frustrate
the labors of all the rest. Such a decision not
only forestalls the possibility of reaching a con-
clusion upon any really vital matter, but it pre-
vents even the discussion of the subjects most
needing to be considered. At the termination of
the second conference at The Hague, after four
months of tuition in the gentle art of arriving at
no conclusion under past-masters in obstructive
diplomacy, many of the most thoughtful of the
delegates were of the opinion that another con-
192 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
ference to be held under the same conditions
would be a waste of energy.
What then should be the competency of an in-
ternational conference? What authority may
safely and wisely be attributed to it? In other
words, how far may an independent nation sub-
mit to the collective decisions of such a body?
Reserving its political independence and its
territorial integrity in the mandate constituting
such a conference, supposing the conference to
be composed exclusively of constitutional states,
why should it not submit to any decisions in the
nature of general laws which after full discussion
the large majority is willing to accept and agrees
to observe?
Here is the crux of the whole matter of in-
ternational organization. If everything is to re-
main entirely voluntary, such organization is use-
less. If, on the contrary, everything is compul-
sory, that makes an end of state independence
and transfers sovereignty altogether to a central
body.
The key to the problem is to be found in the
expression "decisions in the nature of general
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION 193
laws." There is no reason why such decisions,
made under constitutional limitations, should not
be freely accepted as binding. It is the only way
in which the rules of international law can be
brought to any high degree of perfection; and it
is the perfection of these rules — that is, their ap-
proximation to principles of justice — that alone
can furnish a basis for the normal life of a so-
ciety of states.
Given an acceptable body of law, the necessary
machinery of international government is re-
duced to extreme simplicity. Next comes the
need of judicial decision. The reluctance of con-
stitutional governments to submit their disputes
to arbitration does not proceed from a desire to
act unjustly. It arises rather from the conviction
that in the absence of fixed standards of judg-
ment decisions will be reached which are purely
arbitrary — mere attempts to settle the dispute by
makeshift compromises that do not embody jus-
tice to any one. Where the law is clear, there is
little difficulty in inducing responsible govern-
ments to submit to an international tribunal dis-
putes which, to use the technical word, are "jus-
ticiable," that is, which are of a legal character.
194 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
But it is obvious that the reason why so many
international questions are not of a legal char-
acter is simply because the law is so incomplete,
so imperfect, or customs are so contradictory,
that there is no legal basis of settlement, since
there is virtually no clear law upon the subject.
The remedy here is quite simple. It consists
in perfecting the law; and the law can be per-
fected only by discussion and decision in an in-
ternational conference, the members of which are
willing to accept one another's bona fides, and
respect the clear, deliberate, and preponderant col-
lective judgment of the delegates.
It is true that difficulties have been raised re-
garding the formation of an international ju-
diciary, but the chief of these has grown out of
the idea that such a tribunal must have a uni-
versal character; that is, that every state must
have a representative on the international bench.
A court composed of forty-four judges would be
in every way impracticable. But it is altogether
unnecessary. The assumption that every state
must be represented on the bench is based upon
the idea that every state must sit in its own case,
which is absurd. This idea grows wholly out
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION 195
of the vagueness and imperfection of the law,
which involves the reference of a dispute to the
private judgment of a jurist who may be in-
fluenced by his national prejudices in making his
decision. But when the law is clear and com-
plete, the decision is greatly simplified. It then
becomes merely an ascertainment of facts which
must rest on sufficient evidence, and an applica-
tion of the law to the circumstances of the case.
National prejudice, under these conditions, is
virtually excluded; and where the law is per-
fectly clear the requirements of a good interna-
tional judge are simply common honesty and
clear intelligence, which happily are not national
monopolies and are not impossible to find.
As to the form or constitution of the court, that
is a matter of much less consequence than is
ordinarily supposed. The important thing is
that there should be some competent court avail-
able; for ordinary cases, perhaps, a small per-
manent tribunal of expert jurists always open
to hearings, and for special and delicate con-
troversies specifically chosen judges selected ad
hoc by the contestants.
When we come to the enforcement of judicial
196 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
decisions, other difficulties present themselves, but
most of them are imaginary, at least as far as
constitutional states are concerned, for these are
habituated to accepting without hesitation the
decisions of properly constituted courts. As for
absolutist governments, — governments based on
force and not on law, — they are by definition left
out of the society of states as here conceived.
There would be the same danger in including
them in it that there would be in inviting a band
of highway robbers to form part of a protec-
tive constabulary to secure the safety of prop-
erty.
The natural consequence of refusing to respect
the decision of an accepted international judicial
tribunal would be, that a state thus refusing
would henceforth be considered an international
outlaw, and might properly be treated as such.
How far military power should be employed
in the enforcement of international obligations is
a matter for grave consideration. The use of
military force means war, and the question there-
fore becomes, For what purposes should nations
be prepared to go to war? Certainly not for any
objects that can be peaceably obtained without
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION 197
the sacrifice of essential rights. Certainly not for
any such abstract idea as peace, apart from any
known or concrete circumstances. No wise na-
tion, therefore, will enter into any general com-
pact to "enforce peace," which in view of actual
facts might bind it to the most odious obligations
against its own judgment and conscience. Such
an agreement would, moreover, bind itself and
its cosignatories by a solemn compact to preserve
the status quo, for a time at least, in every unjust
situation. Nor is there less danger in the en-
forcement of delay, which might produce worse
consequences than prompt action. But there
might, with very good reason, be an international
declaration of what should constitute just and
unjust causes of war, which would serve as a
warning to unjust aggressors as to where the sym-
pathies of neutrals would be placed in case the
rules were violated. It is inconceivable that
prudent statesmen will ever unite in an engage-
ment to go to war under circumstances wholly
unknown to them, and not affecting the direct in-
terests of the powers they represent or their specific
obligations toward their neighbors or allies. In-
ternational morality will find its best field of de-
198 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
velopment in conditions that leave the nations free
to exercise in such matters their reason and their
consciences in the light of the actual conditions
by which they may be surrounded.
There remain, of course, many international
questions that cannot be reduced to formulae of
international law, or submitted to the decision of
judicial tribunals. These are the questions of
national policy which every nation must reserve
for its own determination. What means each na-
tion shall take for its own defense, whether on
land or sea, must be left to its own decision, as
well as where to find its friends and whom to
consider as its enemies.
But this reserve of national independence by
no means excludes international relations outside
of those which relate to the determination and en-
forcement of international law. There is a wide
field for friendly social intercourse, for mutual
counsel, for an exchange of views, and for the
exercise of those influences which promote con-
fidence and consolidate friendship. This is the
work of diplomacy which will find its task greatly
lightened, but not in any sense superseded, by
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION 199
the perfection of international law, and the re-
sort to international tribunals.
Diplomacy, rightly considered, is a creative
function. It clears the way for better under-
standings and closer relationships. The nations
are constantly making a new world. New needs
and new inventions are incessantly preparing the
way for new international contacts. There is
no longer a possibility of isolation. There can
be in modern times no hermit nation. Trade is
breaking down the old barriers, and the multipli-
cation of new desires, even among semi-barbar-
ous peoples, is opening new ports and develop-
ing new markets.
The whole world is now compelled to think and
to act internationally. The public is hardly
aware of what was accomplished in the last cen-
tury in the way of organizing specific interna-
tional relationships by the creation of such or-
ganisms as the Universal Postal Union, the Tele-
graphic Union, the Radio-Telegraphic Union, the
Metric Union, the Geodetic Association, and half
a dozen other permanent quasi-legislative or ad-
ministrative associations of an international char-
acter. There are, besides, many periodic con-
200 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
ferences relating to industrial property, literary
and artistic property, railway and oceanic trans-
portation, safety at sea, sanitation, the use and
sale of drugs and intoxicants, commercial statis-
tics, monetary affairs, and other matters of gen-
eral human interest. To these must be added
the permanent commissions such as the Bureau of
The Hague Tribunal, the Sugar Commission, the
Opium Commission, the Committee on the Map
of the World, the Bureau for the Publication of
Customs Tariffs, etc. Some of these are the re-
sult of official action through diplomatic inter-
course, others of private initiative; but all com-
bine to unify the nations, and to accustom them
to cooperation and submission to collective de-
cisions.
The success of these efforts suggests the util-
ity of still wider joint action in the treatment of
those residuary problems which cannot be solved
by legal processes because they are matters not of
strict legality, but of national policy.
I refer now to those great international ques-
tions of an economic nature which create the con-
ditions for economic imperialism, and which,
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION 201
more than any other definable causes, endanger
the peace of the world. The seed-plot of future
wars is to be found in the undeveloped countries.
Unable to protect themselves, they are forced to
rely upon the protection of stronger countries, and
they often become the victims of their designs.
China, Persia, Morocco, Turkey, the Balkan
States, South Africa, these have been the great
centers of international disturbance. It is not
merely that they are markets for manufactured
goods. That rivalry of mere salesmen might
be comparatively innocuous. Economic imperi-
alism has its roots in the exportation of capital
seeking permanent investment in backward coun-
tries, in concessions, in the political influence that
extorts them, and mainly in the foreign govern-
mental power that backs up and supports the
extortions. Finally, the rivalry for monopoly
between the subjects or citizens of different gov-
ernments leads to friction. Intrigues follow,
contracts are opposed or broken, acquired rights
are insisted upon, and powerful financial influ-
ences are brought to bear for the employment of
armies and navies to enforce them. Dynastic
202 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
imperialism masks its political designs under this
defense of alleged national rights and interests,
and embraces the opportunity to make a popular
war; whereas, without such an excuse, there
would be opposition to a military adventure.
It cannot be held that the development of the
backward countries is undesirable, or that the
protection of its own nationals by a government
is not a duty. On the contrary, it is only by
foreign capital that the resources of these
neglected territories can be utilized for the benefit
of mankind; and every citizen has a rightful
claim upon his government to protect him from
injustice even in a foreign land. The extension
of civilization over the earth demands both the
enterprise of the pioneer and the assertion of civil
authority. The crime of governments is that for
political advantage they make business a partner
in schemes of military exploitation ; and the folly
of the business world is that it invites the power
of the sword to tip the balance of business compe-
tition, thereby involving itself in military costs
that heavily handicap all industrial and commer-
cial activities in time of peace, and sweep them to
the brink of ruin in time of war.
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION 203
From these undeniable facts two fallacious con-
clusions are sometimes drawn : ( 1 ) that foreign in-
vestors and diplomatists are conspirators against
peace; and (2) that those who extend their enter-
prises to foreign lands deserve for their cupidity
to suffer loss if they meet with misfortune.
Neither of these conclusions is founded in fact
or is worthy of acceptance. If all nations should
accept them, there would be an end to all foreign
trade. It is true that foreign investors seek gov-
ernmental protection, and that wise governments
protect foreign investors; but in neither case is
there good ground for accusation of wrong-doing.
The evil is that, instead of promoting the conduct
of international business upon proper business
lines, by international agreement and coopera-
tion, governments, without effectual efforts to
avoid the use of military force, employ it as an
instrument of national commercial success and
territorial expansion; that is, to secure and hold
points of permanent advantage, through political
control of distant and strategical parts of the
earth, for the extension of empire. Exploita-
tion, monopoly, colonization, and conquest are
the successive steps in this procedure.
204 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
To such processes, sustained by military force,
international law and courts of arbitration pre-
sent but feeble barriers. So long as these con-
tinue to be national policies, there will be much
that cannot be brought within the scope of in-
ternational legislation. But is it not evident that
these business interests are proper subjects for
negotiation and conciliation? The moment the
problem of trade is envisaged as a purely business
proposition apart from dynastic considerations,
it is clear that military methods of extending
civilization are not in the true interest of the
people of any country, and not even to the high-
est advantage of the persons who for commercial
reasons encourage them.
It is time, therefore, for business men — the
great manufacturers, bankers, ship-owners, and
traders — to say to their governments: "We do
not ask you to promote our interests by armies
and navies; we wish you to give us an oppor-
tunity to organize the business of the world on
business lines. While your diplomatists and jur-
ists meet at The Hague to settle questions of
rights, bring us together with your sanction in a
world congress with representatives of other na-
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION 205
tions to consider our mutual interests. We shall
speak of coal, of iron, of shipping, of the gold
supply, and of their distribution; and we shall
be able to show that if the governments will keep
their hands off and leave our business to us, the
whole world shall be well fed and well warmed
and well clothed; and, at the same time we shall
all, yes all, obtain a greater share of wealth than
we now have or can ever hope to have under the
military system. And when we have ourselves,
as business men, worked out our plans and our
compromises, then we shall ask you to unite, as
governments, to see that the seas are free from
piracy and menace to life and property, and that
we may have the combined force of civilized gov
ernments behind us to protect us from robbery
and abuse by any one of them."
In brief, an international board of trade con-
ciliation, composed of representative business
men, supplemented by frequent general confer-
ences, with no force behind them but the evi-
dence of facts and the power of persuasion, if
held to complete publicity, could accomplish more
in five years to insure the peace and prosperity of
the world than any secret negotiations by dip-
206 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
lomatists backed by all the armies in existence.
If the business of the world were once frankly
established upon a world basis, community of in-
terest would go far to discourage war, for modern
wars originate chiefly from economic inequalities
and ambitions ; and the agents of economic power,
if they were not in alliance with military force
exercised in the interest of dynastic purposes,
could more easily satisfy them by purely economic
means.
There remain the questions of free waterways
— the paths of world intercourse — from which
some nations are excluded, the "open door" in
the countries of still unappropriated markets, and
the tariff walls. These also are business ques-
tions and fit problems for business men, which
the sword can never rightly settle. So far, they
also have been regarded as purely political ques-
tions, and have been treated as such. But all
matters of policy are primarily questions of profit
or expediency and not of right and wrong, al-
though they may involve them. The difference is
important, for right and wrong cannot be com-
promised, while expediency and profit are always
affairs of transaction. There is, therefore, noth-
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION 207
ing hopeless in such problems, which are matters
to argue about, but not to fight about.
Being an economic as well as a jural problem,
international organization must be worked out by
a combination of governmental and business
agencies. Neither can be entrusted with the en-
tire task. The material needs of mankind can-
not be regulated by rigid legal formulae, which
would impose a despotism too depressing to be
endured. On the other hand, purely business
motives* which, if given a free hand, might pro-
duce intolerable commercial trusts, in the end
more powerful than governments, are in need of
legal control. It is by the intelligent cooperation
of these two agencies, the legal and the economic,
for the welfare of mankind, that international or-
ganization will attain its normal ends.
CHAPTER VII
THE CONSTRUCTIVE POWER OF
DEMOCRACY
IN view of its bearing upon the problem of inter-
national organization, one of the fundamental
questions in the great conflict that began in
Europe in 1914 and has now extended to the whole
world appears to be whether autocracy or democ-
racy is finally to prevail. At first apparently a
mere struggle for tribal predominance, the war
has become a battle of institutions and legal sys-
tems. Is the world to be ruled by force or by
law? And if by law, who is to say what the law
shall be?
No thoughtful man can any longer doubt that
imperialism has destroyed Europe and can never
reconstruct it. The reason is evident. Imperial-
ism means the forcible domination of one nation
over others. Imperial policies not only conflict,
they are intrinsically incapable of reconciliation.
208
POWER OF DEMOCRACY 209
An appeal, therefore, is now made to democracy
to bring peace and order and mutual confidence
out of the chaos that autocratic rule has produced.
All the aspirations for the creation of a truly
human world — a world in which general prin-
ciples of justice shall prevail — seem to gather
around this word as if it were the only remaining
hope of humanity. Never before has the need of
a great constructive principle in international
affairs been so apparent. Never before has the
opportunity for its employment been so auspi-
cious. Never before has mankind, as if inspired
by a common impulse, so completely broken away
from autocratic traditions. To-day it is a fact
that four-fifths of the habitable surface of the
earth is dedicated to the aspirations of democracy;
and included in this area is at least three-fourths
of the human race. China, with her four hun-
dred million human beings, and Russia, with
nearly two hundred millions, have thrown off the
yoke of absolutism, and joined the great republics
of the West in the stupendous task of national
self-government.
They, too, are in this war for democracy.
What does it mean to them, this old Greek word
210 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
which has had such a short history and yet con-
tains such vast implications? What is the phi-
losophy that lies behind it or within it? What
new direction does it point out? What new en-
ergies does it release ? What new ideals does it
set up? What new achievements does it imply?
Shall they be the better or the worse for the work-
ing of this new leaven that seems about to change
the destiny of nations?
If democracy were merely a repudiation of au-
tocracy, a mere escape from authority, a mere
drift into vacuity, it would undoubtedly be a dan-
gerous experiment for any nation to embark upon.
It does, indeed, begin with a demand for liberty,
but this is by no means a negative conception. It
is rather a constructive force. Liberty is the re-
moval of hindrances to the largest, fullest, most
fruitful human activities. But it is not an end,
it is only a condition. And what demands this
condition is the whole volume of human longing
and striving, the reaching out for self-realization
in thought and action. It is, in brief, humanity
pressing onward to its goal.
It is this vast inward urgency that gives sig-
POWER OF DEMOCRACY 211
nificance to democracy. It is imperative, it is
irresistible. By suppressing the individual per-
son, this aspiration may for a time seem to be
destroyed; but at some unexpected moment it will
break out anew and sweep everything before it.
It is essentially a mass movement. Isolated, the
individual person is timid, circumspect, even ob-
sequious. United, the people are bold, manda-
tory, overwhelming. "The will of the people" — '-
how the demagogue loves to appeal to it, to invoke
it, to inspire it, to utilize it, to appropriate it to
the accomplishment of his purposes! And how
readily it responds to any ardent touch that evokes
its expression! The sense of restraint removed,
the prospect of desires gratified, the impulse of
new-found power — what an exaltation, what an
intoxication they produce !
But if this were all, if the change from an auto*
cratic to a democratic regime resulted in nothing
but this elation of spirit, we might be able to ex-
plain the origin of revolutions, but we could not
justify them to our intelligence. When it comes
to a question of political philosophy and we are
asked to establish the substantial excellence of
democracy, we enter an arena of debate in which
212 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
there is a wide field for discussion. Granting the
existence of a high degree of intelligence, there
is no security in that alone. Man is a being of
mixed desires; some of them are good and some
of them are bad. Into what is called "the will of
the people" all of these enter as constituent mo-
tives or impulses. What is to certify that this
will shall be always a good will ? How shall we
know that sometimes it may not be base and sel-
fish ? How shall we be sure that the evil may not
predominate over the good, the many over the
few, the vicious over the virtuous, the idle and
the empty-handed over the industrious and the
prudent, What security, it may be asked, has
any principle of right, where the arbitrary will of
an unrestricted majority prevails? Who can be
held responsible for its action? What can re-
strain it from misconduct? Why do we put up
the sign, "Beware of pickpockets" in great assem-
blies, and increase the police force the larger the
crowd becomes ? If as a totality it is honest, why
does the mass of men need to be so carefully
guarded against itself? If life and property are
safer under the protection of a paid agent than
when they are entrusted to the spontaneous im-
POWER OF DEMOCRACY 213
pulses of a multitude, is it not wiser, it will be
demanded, to concentrate unlimited power in the
hands of a capable ruler, set apart for the pur-
pose and placed beyond the influence of ordinary
motives?
This is, in fact, the thesis of those who
defend the idea of monarchy as a form of govern-
ment. Assuming that a personal sovereign can
be placed and kept beyond the influence of ordi-
nary human motives, the theory has distinct ad-
vantages. Objection to it cannot well be urged
on the ground that it involves a concentration of
power, for this is sometimes necessary to effi-
ciency; and, in great emergencies, like those
created by the present war, it is resorted to by
democracies, also, as the only means of their
preservation. What renders monarchy indefen-
sible in the eyes of democracy is that it recognizes
as supreme a power that is above the law, and
that claims to be an arbitrary source of law. The
protest of democracy against autocracy is not
based on the fact that definite and necessary au-
thority is confided to one man. It is that autoc-
racy consists in the exercise of a power that is not
only not under the restraint of law, but claims
214 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
authority to ignore all law — a power that deter-
mines the destinies of men and of whole nations
without regard to any principles of right, treating
them as mere passive instruments of its own aims
and purposes, or of aims and purposes inspired
by those who can influence the sovereign for their
own private and exclusive benefit.
When we go to the bottom of the indictment
against autocracy, it is not at all that one man
represents the will of a whole nation, but that an
arbitrary and lawless will is in command of
dangerous forces, and insists on doing what a
just rule of action would forbid. Every type of
human government must of necessity admit of the
delegation of powers, and it is a matter of no con-
cern to one nation to whom another nation dele-
gates those powers. The whole issue centers
around the question, What is the source and
measure of rightful authority?
What democracy asserts and autocracy denies
is that all rightful authority in human govern-
ments is derived from the nature of the human
beings who are to be governed. When, there-
fore, Autocracy declares, "I create the law because
POWER OF DEMOCRACY 215
I am strong," Democracy replies, "It is justice,
not strength, that should create the law."
What then is the origin of law? Historically
rules of action have been laid down by those who
have had the power to enforce them. Before such
rules were consciously and specifically formulated,
law consisted in the customs of the groups or
societies in which they had come to be adopted as
the usual modes of action. In the societies where
conquest or other forms of ascendancy had pro-
duced a personal ruler, they were the edicts or
decrees of the ruler and his counselors. These
forms of obedience were imposed upon subject
peoples and accompanied with the prospect of
penalties to be inflicted if they were not regarded.
To the historical school of legal philosophy, there-
fore, law is simply the sum of those rules of action
which have an outward sanction. It is an ex-
pression of sovereign will. It is a trophy of
power. Whoever can enforce his will can make
the law. With morality and abstract right it has
nothing whatever to do. If it is just, it is not
because law is essentially just, but because it has
happened to be prescribed in a spirit of justice.
216 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
It is, in fact, often unjust ; but, just or unjust, it
is expedient to obey it, for, like the laws of the
natural world, it is a part of the environment in
which we live, and the consequences of obedience
and disobedience are reasonably sure to follow.
From this theory of the nature of law is derived
an equally arbitrary theory of the nature of the
state. Etymologically, it is the status, the condi-
tion which the sovereign has imposed. The phi-
losophers of course could not neglect so interesting
a subject of speculation, and some of them have
represented it as a kind of self-subsisting entity,
an emanation of a metaphysical absolute, an in-
carnation of divinity, and even as a huge levia-
than, a natural organism of which the monarch
is the head, and of which the ordinary person is
only a subordinate molecule. Autocracy has
eagerly appropriated these conceptions as furnish-
ing a convenient vehicle for imposing its preten-
sions by making itself seem to be a part of the
order of nature. Wishing to screen itself from
the exactions of morality as well as from the judg-
ments of the intellect, it has enveloped itself in
the impenetrable mysteries of religion, thus ren-
POWER OF DEMOCRACY 217
dering itself unapproachable by the common man,
and wholly inscrutable to the ordinary mind.
Democracy has irreverently swept aside this
veil of metaphysical mysticism. For it law is to
be discovered in the nature of man as a personal
and social being. It is something other than the
sum of sovereign decrees. It is a revelation of
mutual obligations. Like the truths of nature
it is an object of unending research. Its basic
principles like geometric axioms are intuitions
of universal reason. It springs from inherent
personal rights, and issues in social duties. It is
preeminently a principle of intelligence. It finds
its standards in universal rational conceptions like
those of justice and equity. It has never yet at-
tained perfect expression, but it is an ever-present
mandate of nature, which, like a flowing stream,
rushes on amid new and changing scenes, as vari-
able in its content as the growing needs of men,
but as firm in the indications of its direction as the
granite walls that bound the course of a mighty
river on its journey to the sea.
It is this idea of law as a persistent human ideal
that has determined democracy's conception of the
state, which is not a self-subsisting entity, and
218 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
not like society a purely natural product, but a
creation of the mind and purpose of man. It
belongs to the category of legal relations rather
than to that of material substance. Its only sub-
stantial components are the wills of human per-
sons. If there were no people, there would be no
state.
Historically, it is true, the state has consisted
chiefly in a relation of subordination between the
persons ruled and the persons who ruled them.
It was a status produced by the domination of the
weak by the strong. It is historically correct,
therefore, to speak of the state as "a creation of
force," and of sovereignty, which is its essence,
as "supreme power." This is the state as autoc-
racy would maintain it, the creation of arbitrary
power beyond the jurisdiction of any binding law,
and without any form of responsibility.
For democracy the state has an entirely differ-
ent meaning. It is a status produced not by force,
but by voluntary consent. It is the expression of
what is most vital and essential in the nature of
man as a moral and social being. As law is de-
rived from principles inherent in rational intelli-
gence, the state is an embodiment of law in per-
POWER OF DEMOCRACY 219
manent institutions. Both the law and the state
rest on the axiom of inherent personal rights to
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Autocracy speaks as if life itself belonged to
the individual person only through an act of
grace. In fact it proclaims openly that the state
is the sole creator of rights, and what it has cre-
ated it may also take away. Democracy reverses
these relations, and declares that government is
created by the consent of the governed. Priority
therefore belongs to the individual person, be-
cause society is wholly composed of individual
persons, in whom alone is to be found either a
basis or a consciousness of rights. Not, indeed,
persons in isolation or as abstract entities, for
men have never existed in separation from society
into which all are born and of which all form a
part. It is from the nature of human beings ex-
isting in communities that democracy derives its
theory of rights, but it is not from the fact of
"social solidarity" that it can be deduced. That
fact alone contains no implication of rightful
authority,- or of any moral qualities whatever.
Each person in a community might still be a
member of it without observing any rule but his
220 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
own interest if that were the general disposition.
A distinction between right and wrong could
never be deduced from such a community. Such
a distinction exists only for the individual mind
and conscience and can be predicated only of
individual minds and consciences capable of
knowing their own rights and the duties correla-
tive to such rights.
If the state cannot be founded on the mere fact
of social solidarity, it is even less possible to base
it upon the fiction of a self-subsistent "social con-
sciousness," for such a consciousness does not
exist. There is in a community a general con-
sensus of ideas and sentiments, but it inheres in
the minds of its individual members only. To
them it has the quality of a law for conduct, and
the expression of it becomes the solid foundation
of the state. Its value is to be found in the fact
that it is recognized to be an embodiment of jus-
tice, and may therefore be generally accepted
without resort to violence. Being the composite
formula of their united conceptions of their rights,
obedience to it may be secured with a minimum
of penalty.
But if it is true that a just government is a
POWER OF DEMOCRACY 221
creation of the governed, the question is pressed
upon us, How far may some individual persons
rightly enforce their own private wills upon other
individual persons? If there is any rightful
authority in government, it must be derived from
beings who believe themselves to possess inherent
rights because they distinguish between right and
wrong in conduct. What inherent rights then do
some possess which do not belong to all? And
what principle can be adopted as a standard of
judgment unless it is universal?
We perceive, therefore, that, while autocracy
has no solid moral foundation, the triumph of de-
mocracy involves a principle of self-abnegation
which not all the advocates of its desirability are
willing to accept. The people cannot logically
take over and exercise the absolute and unlimited
authority which they have repudiated. We are
compelled to recognize the fact that when it comes
to imposing an absolute will upon a person to an
extent that robs him of an inherent right like
that to life, liberty, or property, it makes no prac-
tical difference whether that deprivation is ef-
fected by one or a few or a majority of his fellow-
222 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
beings, since in all these cases he is equally di-
vested of his right. When the state does this, no
matter what the form of government may be, it
becomes despotic, and its tyranny is as odious
under one disguise as under another.
It is necessary, therefore, for democracy to plant
itself firmly and unalterably upon the rights of
the individual person and the doctrine that gov-
ernment exists to secure these rights. Unless it
stands upon this foundation, it has no ground of
protest against autocracy, and it has no means of
self -justification. A society may transform itself
into a predatory band, but, however numerous or
powerful it may be, it is impossible to identify
such a band with the democratic conception of the
state. A true democracy can neither oppress the
poor nor rob the rich, for it is based on equal laws
for all. If it were not loyal to the right of every
man, no matter how humble or how fortunate, it
would repudiate its own basis of authority. It
might, when supported by great majorities, be
very formidable, even irresistible, but, although
by means of its power it could enforce obedience,
it could not command our respect or inspire our
loyalty.
POWER OF DEMOCRACY 223
The right of a government to claim legitimacy
and to demand that its authority be respected is
in no sense founded upon its power, but upon its
purpose, and that purpose must be the protection
of all human rights. Everything else is pure as-
sumption. And there are in the world no rights
that are not in some sense inherent in persons, or
in some manner derived from them. Eliminate
the human being from your order of ideas, and
you have not only rendered rightful authority an
illusion, you have also destroyed altogether the
sole foundation for the conception of right, and
reduced the whole fabric of society to a complex
of purely mechanical relations.
If this be true, there is no human being, no mat-
ter hdw poor or feeble or helpless, who does not,
by virtue of the nature and dignity of personality
possess inherent rights and claims to just consider-
ation which the most overwhelming majorities
cannot take away without the logical destruction
of their own right to formulate the law; for the
right to make law has no other solid foundation
than this, that it consists simply and solely in the
right to protect personal rights by placing the
whole force of the community behind them.
224 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
This is the creed of democracy. Against it
autocracy opposes the traditions of power, the
sophisms of sovereignty, the keen edge of the
drawn sword. Above all human rights it places
the interests of the state as supreme power, with
its pretended right of conquest and subjugation,
derived from some mysterious mandate of deity
in whose name it claims the exclusive right to
speak. It boasts of the gleam of its shining
armor. It hides its schemes of dishonor behind
the mask of virtue. It promises glory and plun-
der. It tramples the breasts of women under the
feet of its horses. It rains fire from the clouds,
desolates fair landscapes, mutilates temples, car-
ries whole populations into slavery, and adds to
the natural terrors of the sea the diabolical con-
trivances of human ingenuity dedicated to the task
of wholesale destruction.
While humanity shudders, democracy goes
forth to the rescue. It is the battle of St. George
and the dragon multiplied by all the powers of
strong nations. But it is not a contest of ma-
terial forces only. It is a struggle of principles.
How can Europe be reconstituted? How can
civilization be restored? How can the world
POWER OF DEMOCRACY 225
resume its task of culture and social develop-
ment?
Autocracy has no answer. Triumphant, it
would cause all nations to pass under its yoke and
yield to its exactions. Only half defeated, even
in its death-throes it would invoke new wars,
dream of more cruel barbarities, plan still wider
devastations. Let the battle, then, be fought out
now. But first it must be won in the thoughts
of men. Who is it who speaks for humanity?
Is it autocracy or is it democracy? What can
end triumphant tribalism? What can establish
universal humanism ? It is man and not the state
that can give the answer.
But the state must continue to exist. The na-
tions are persistent realities. They may be deci-
mated in numbers and impoverished in their pos-
sessions, but they cannot be destroyed. Ruined
in fortune, broken and mutilated in person, men
may enclose themselves in trenches and fortifica-
tions with death in perpetual command of their
frontiers, but they will still cling to their national-
ity; in their desperate extremity they will learn
more and more to love it, and as long as a shred of
226 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
the riddled and blood-stained banner of their
country flutters above the field of carnage, they
will still feel that they belong to a nation.
What, then, is a nation, but a group of men
with common traditions, common memories, com-
mon interests, and common aims? But there is
also the larger community. The traditions, the
memories, the interests, and the aims may be very
different, but beneath them all and over them all
is the community of rights. These are not tribal.
They are not national. They are human and
universal.
Between democracy and the fiction of unlimited
sovereignty there can be no logical alliance. If
the postulates of democracy are true, then the pre-
tension to unlimited sovereignty is false. A state
has no rights that are not derived from the rights
of the persons who compose it. The government
they create has no other source of authority. But
even the sum of all such rights does not create an
unlimited sovereignty. By virtue of their origin,
the just powers of the state are limited both as
respects its citizens, and as regards all other
states; for the inherent rights of its components,
on which the whole structure of its authority
POWER OF DEMOCRACY 227
rests, may not justly be taken away and other
states, like itself, represent with equal clearness
the rights of other nations which therefore cannot
justly be denied.
Thus understood, the value of democracy as a
basis for international law is apparent. As the
just powers of separate states are derived from
the personal rights of their constituents, so the
idea of international rights arises from the rela-
tions of independent states. They, too, thus be-
come endowed with rights of existence, of inde-
pendence, of just treatment, of self-defense; but
the attribute of an unlimited sovereignty is not
among them. It cannot be deduced from any
source whatever except physical power, and mere
physical power, apart from principles of justice,
is not legal authority in any sense which scientific
jurisprudence can maintain.
Autocracy, based on no distinction of right and
wrong, asserts the absolute subjection of some
persons to the will and dictation of other persons,
and without inconsistency affirms also the ab-
solute subjection of some nations to other nations,
the test of superiority being merely their relative
strength. He who has the power to do so has the
228 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
right to rule; and the only limit to this right,
according to autocracy, is in the power to resist it.
What this signifies for democracy is evident.
It means that however unwilling to do so, peace-
able nations must arm themselves and prepare all
the vast and complicated enginery of war on land
and sea in order to preserve their existence. It
means that as long as autocracy has plans of con-
quest democracy is in danger. In vain it elab-
orates constitutions for the guarantee of individual
rights. In vain it convokes international confer-
ences. In vain it signs treaties and conventions.
At some unexpected moment, perhaps in the midst
of delicate negotiations, it suddenly hears the
tramp of invading armies, it sees the sky dark-
ened with innumerable air craft, while demons
of the deep strew the seas with shattered ships and
mutilated corpses.
What is the object of these terrors? It is that
the authors of them may impose their will upon
others. The truth is that imperialism is not so
much a form of government as a system of forci-
ble exploitation. No modern nation supports
autocratic rule merely out of deference to a
dynasty. The dogma of divine right is held
POWER OF DEMOCRACY 229
chiefly by the rulers who are its beneficiaries ; but
whole peoples, consciously or unconsciously, are
their business partners in predatory exploits.
The motive of these nations is national enrich-
ment. Trade, colonies, mineral resources, to be
exploited in the interest of the commercial class —
these are the real pillars of autocracy, resting
upon the interests of a military caste — the brood
of younger sons, too proud to work, who must be
provided with a gentleman's career. Autocracy
flourishes nowhere without the stimulus of pros-
pective war, and it is in modern times a people's
war, of which Hohenzollerns and Hapsburgs are
the unhappy instruments quite as much as they
are the personal authors. Imperialism has be-
come a national predatory enterprise far more
than it is a political conviction, and the evidence
of this is so overwhelming that it cannot be de-
nied. The imperialistic organizations in Ger-
many that urged on the war under the preposter-
ous representation that the empire was attacked
are now declaring that there can be "no peace
without indemnities for the enormous sacrifices
Germany has made, and to develop her economic,
cultural, and social life." "Germany," it is de-
230 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
dared, "must secure better protection for its
frontiers, land for settlement and food produc-
tion, the strengthening of its naval position, and
the improved condition of its industries by greater
supplies of raw materials." Failing these, it has
been openly announced in the Reichstag that Ger-
many must be indemnified for her sacrifices by the
people of the United States of America.
With the political preferences of a nation, other
nations have no right to interfere; but when im-
perial exploitation is convicted by its own words
of predatory designs, when it wantonly destroys
the independence of small states, expropriates
their resources and carries into captivity their van-
quished populations, interference becomes an in-
ternational duty.
In a war alleged to be one of defense, the armies
of the German Empire are encamped on the terri-
tory of twelve independent nations, nine of which
are the victims of its depredations, and three of
which are its partners in crime. After acts of
piracy unknown in the history of civilized coun-
tries, including the wanton murder of innocent
men, women, and children on the high seas, it
POWER OF DEMOCRACY 231
has taken complete possession of the Atlantic
Ocean, so that no ship of any nation is anywhere
safe from destruction. But even these enormities
did not set a limit to the arrogance and outlawry
of the imperial spirit; and as a punishment for
the resentment felt because of the injuries endured
the territory of the United States was to be in-
vaded and dismembered by means of a subsidized
coalition to be used as an instrument for a blow
at our national life.
Not only is autocracy organized for war with a
design to subsist upon it, but it carries an infec-
tion that penetrates to the heart of bodies politic
that shrink from contact with it. Some form and
degree of it is forced upon any nation which, how-
ever unwillingly, seriously undertakes to act in
its own defense. All actual war measures, to
some extent, denature democracy. Enforced
military service, exorbitant taxation, the sup-
pression of a free press, the dictatorial powers of
the executive, the constraint placed upon legisla-
tive action in time of war — all these, though un-
avoidable, are encroachments upon the immuni-
ties of the individual person, suspend the full en-
232 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
joyment of his personal freedom, and temporarily
assimilate even a democratic government to the
rule of an autocrat.
In order to preserve their existence democracies
must submit for a time to this sacrifice, but in do-
ing so they risk the permanent loss of some of
their liberties, for in a protracted war these are
partly forgotten, and if this condition endures,
they may never be wholly recovered. When a
government is obliged in self-defense to take over
all the people's industries, to organize all their
activities, to regulate all their earnings and ex-
penditures, democracy can hardly distinguish it-
self from autocracy except by the purity and ele-
vation of its purpose in rendering effective its
means of military defense. The present war has
demonstrated that this is no unfounded inference.
"England," wrote a German historian in the first
year of the war, "if she would play any part what-
ever in the world's future, must rebuild her po-
litical structure from the ground up, and adopt a
state organization such as prevails on the con-
tinent, and which has found its fullest develop-
ment, and therefore its highest efficiency, in the
German State."
POWER OF DEMOCRACY 233
This prediction has been already in part ful-
filled, and it has proved that the very existence of
free governments depends upon the suppression
of that type of imperialism which menaces the
independence of all nations.
There can therefore be no permanent peace
until autocratic power is ended. It is futile, it is
grossly inconsistent and reprehensible, for those
who love peace to demand it until the conditions
for its permanence can be established.
Can democracy ever establish it? It must
either do so or itself be overcome. It alone pos-
sesses the constructive power to impose peace by
the extension of the universal principles of justice
from which it derives its own existence. If it
should prove false to them, its historic mission
must end in failure. It has no quarrel with the
idea of nationality ; but the problem of national-
ity, with its serious geographic complications, can
never be solved by any mere barter and sale of
nations or by any process of national vivisection.
Its only solution is in the souls of the people.
Render them free to choose, give them their rights
of unrestrained affiliation, cultural development,
local legislation, federation according to their
234 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
native affinities, the assured independence of the
groups thus formed, and just economic advan-
tages, and no serious problems of nationality will
remain.
But this involves a reconstruction of the idea of
sovereignty. In its dynastic sense the word must
be eliminated from the vocabulary of international
politics. No ruler should be the possessor of
whole populations merely because he has con-
quered them. For democracies the word sover-
eignty in its absolute sense has no meaning.
What remains of it and all to which constitutional
states can lay claim is merely the right of a free
and independent nation to exist, to legislate for
itself, to defend itself, and to enter into relations
with other similar states on the basis of juristic
equality, under principles of international law
which respect its inherent rights as free constitu-
tions respect the rights of the individual persons
who live under them.
With this high purpose of establishing law and
liberty, young men and old may well gird them-
selves for the conflict. Whoever does so may rest
tranquilly under the gaze of the eternal stars that
shine in the wide firmament over his bivouac at
POWER OF DEMOCRACY 235
midnight, and may firmly face the curtain of fire
in the deeper night of beclouded battle, for he will
be in communion with all that is noblest in the
past and all that is greatest in the future. And
if he fall in this struggle, he may close his eyes
with the assurance that his act of sacrifice will
open to him a deeper sense of communion with the
Being that has placed in his keeping for immortal
uses the powers of a mortal life.
CHAPTER VIII
AMERICA'S INTEREST IN THE NEW EUROPE
VITAL as the principles of democracy are be-
lieved to be to the independence of nations
and the ultimate peace of the world, the United
States of America would never have entered the
Great War for the purpose of imposing a demo-
cratic form of government upon any people.
What makes the present struggle in a real sense a
battle for democracy is the fact that the exposure
of imperial designs has produced a conviction
that if these designs should prove successful, de-
mocracy would ultimately be rendered impossible
anywhere in the world. Confronted by a trium-
phant imperialism, self-governing nations would
be obliged to protect themselves against aggres-
sion by arming themselves to the full extent of
their resources, and to resort to a permanent cen-
tralization of public powers that would divest
them of their democratic character. Even with
the utmost precautions the weaker independent
236
AMERICA'S INTEREST 237
states, if left to defend themselves unaided, would
eventually be compelled to yield to imperial domi-
nation, thus progressively augmenting the re-
sources of arbitrary power and proportionally
weakening the forces of the independent self-gov-
erning states. If, for example, Central Europe,
as conceived by Naumann, should be consolidated
as the result of the Great War, it would be only a
question of time when not only Belgium, but Hol-
land, Switzerland, the Scandinavian kingdoms,
possibly France itself, and certainly the Balkan
States, would fall under imperial rule. A great
maritime power, such as would then come into
existence, with naval stations on all the sea-coasts
of Europe and acquired colonies, could proceed
to the conquest of the world. If the Imperial
German Government can at present interrupt and
imperil the commerce of the Atlantic and the
Mediterranean, what might be expected of it when
it possessed well-furnished naval stations on the
channel and the Adriatic, not to mention the wider
possibilities ?
It was not, however, the fear of German ex-
pansion in Europe that induced the United States
238 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
to abandon its policy of neutrality. So long as
the war was considered as a merely European
conflict of power, it was to be expected, following
the American tradition of non-interference in
European affairs, that the contest would be re-
garded as foreign to the interests of the American
people. But in the course of its progress it came
to be vaguely realized that a struggle so wide-
spread in extent and so far reaching in its conse-
quences must profoundly affect the whole world.
Even a long succession of incredible outrages
upon the citizens of the United States, accom-
panied with almost open interference with its in-
ternal affairs, did not move the American Govern-
ment to abandon the resolution to remain neutral,
nor did it awaken the American people to a full
realization of the peril to which they were ex-
posed. Hundreds of American men, women, and
children, innocently traveling upon the high seas
in the faith that they were under the protection
of laws and customs which all nations had agreed
to respect, were mercilessly slaughtered under the
orders of the Imperial German Government.
Repeated protests were followed by the continued
destruction of non-combatant lives and the sink-
AMERICA'S INTEREST 239
ing of ships without search or warning, in viola-
tion not only of established laws of the seas, but
of the principles embodied in treaties that had
been solemnly entered into and that the Imperial
Government insisted were still binding upon the
United States.
When the American Government finally an-
nounced that unless the Imperial Government was
disposed to conform to the established rules of
international law, diplomatic relations between
the two countries must cease altogether, a promise
to pursue thenceforth a legal course was made,
but qualified by the demand that the Government
of the United States should serve the purposes of
the Imperial Government with other powers
friendly to the United States. That the restric-
tion placed upon the devastations of submarine
torpedo-boats was intended to be only temporary,
and that these devastations were intended to be
resumed when a sufficient number of boats should
be constructed to become really effective in sup-
pressing American commerce, is now established
in a manner that exposes the utter insincerity of
the Imperial Government in all its professedly
friendly negotiations with the United States.
240 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
On January 24, 1917, the Imperial German
Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Herr Zimmermann,
used the following language for publication in
the United States:
In the message which President Wilson addressed to the
Senate (January 22, 1917) the Imperial German Gov-
ernment recognizes with extreme satisfaction the fact that
the aspirations and thoughts of the President continue to
occupy themselves with the question of the restoration of
permanent peace. The exalted moral earnestness in the
words of the President insures them an attentive ear
throughout the world. The Imperial German Government
earnestly hope that the untiring efforts of the President to
restore peace on earth may be crowned with success.
Apparently believing in "the exalted moral
earnestness" of the President of the United States
in his "untiring efforts to restore peace on earth,"
Herr Zimmermann, in the midst of these efforts
for peace, was not only meditating war, but Jive
days before using these expressions he had com-
municated by secret code through the German
ambassador at Washington the following instruc-
tion to the German Minister in Mexico :
Berlin, Jan. 19, 1917.
On the 1st of February we intend to begin submarine
warfare unrestricted. In spite of this, it is our intention
AMERICA'S INTEREST 241
to endeavor to keep neutral the United States of America.
If this attempt is not successful, we propose an alliance
on the following basis with Mexico. That we shall make
war together and together make peace. We shall give
general financial support, and it is understood that Mexico
is to reconquer the lost territory in New Mexico, Texas,
and Arizona. The details are left to you for settlement.
You are instructed to inform the President of Mexico
of the above in the greatest confidence as soon as it is
certain that there will be an outbreak of war with the
United States, and suggest that the President of Mexico, on
his own initiative, should communicate with Japan sug-
gesting adherence at once to this plan. At the same time,
offer to mediate between Germany and Japan.
Please call to the attention of the President of Mexico
that the employment of ruthless submarine warfare now
promises to compel England to make peace in a few
months.
ZlMMERMANN.
One week after expressing his hopes that the
President's efforts for peace "would be crowned
with success," on January 31, the Imperial Ger-
man Government formally announced, as was in-
tended before and during this whole period, that
on and after February 1 it would adopt a policy
of ruthlessness in the use of submarines against
all shipping seeking to pass through certain desig-
nated areas of the high seas.
242 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
This violation of a previous agreement to ob-
serve the rules of international law, the Imperial
German Government well knew was equivalent
to a declaration of war upon the United States,
made in the midst of "the untiring efforts of the
President to restore peace on earth." It was the
German way of expressing "hopes" that these ef-
forts might "be crowned with success." The
pledge to observe the law had lasted until hun-
dreds of submarine-boats were ready to perform
their task of wrecking the commerce of the world,
as an essential preliminary to "the restoration of
peace on earth"! The intention had long been
kept a secret, which the German proposal of peace
negotiations had aided in concealing. On Janu-
ary 19 the Imperial Foreign Office knew that this
vast flotilla of submarines would be ready by
February 1, and that its mission would impose
measures of war upon all neutral nations; yet
when on February 3 diplomatic relations with the
Imperial German Government were severed by
the United States, Berlin naively professed to be
"astonished" !
Not until April 6, however, when overt acts had
demonstrated the fixed purpose of the Imperial
AMERICA'S INTEREST 243
Government to sink American ships, was the
state of war officially declared to exist.
It was with truth that the President said to the
American people, "The wrongs against which we
are now arraying ourselves are no common
wrongs; they cut to the very roots of human life."
It is German violence that, notwithstanding our
peaceable purposes, has made this our war. That
the United States would ultimately be involved
in it was inevitable, for it was conceived and pro-
moted in arrogant contempt of everything for
which the American people stand sponsors. We
have accepted the challenge thrown down to us,
as the President has said, "to vindicate the prin-
ciples of peace and justice in the life of the world
as against selfish and autocratic power, and to set
up among the really free and self-governed peo-
ples of the world such a concert of purpose and of
action as will henceforth insure the observance of
those principles."
It was at last made evident that geographic iso-
lation is no longer a sufficient guarantee of Ameri-
can security, and that it is with a world problem
that we now have to deal. Until this fact was es-
tablished by indisputable evidence, and rendered
244 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
undeniable by a prompt confession that saw in
this hypocrisy nothing that called for shame, few
of our citizens could have believed that it would
ever enter into the plans of the Imperial German
Government to propose the dismemberment of the
United States, and that it would even designate
and portion out whole States as the spoils of a
war of conquest to be promoted by German gold
paid to mercenary armies under the command of
German officers, as the forces of the Ottoman Em-
pire are already commanded by them, for the pur-
pose of rendering the will of Germany supreme
through the conquest of Europe and the mastery
of the sea.
Fortunately, this secret purpose was disclosed
in time to lay bare at a critical moment the real
attitude of the Imperial Government toward the
United States, and thus to reveal to the American
people unmistakably the degeneration of the
Prussian official mind. Happily, also, both the
Japanese and the Mexican governments were re-
sentful of the insult offered to them by the infamy
of this proposal. Even the citizens of the United
States whose racial affinities led them at first to
AMERICA'S INTEREST 245
sympathize with the German cause on account of
their belief in the moral soundness of the German
people must now realize how cruelly they them-
selves, as well as their friends in Germany, have
been deceived by the sophistications of the Im-
perial Government's propaganda, which has
everywhere made appeal to race prejudice and
sordid interest, but never to the noble humanism
that was once esteemed characteristic of German
thought.
The evidence that the motives of the Imperial
German Government are unscrupulous, preda-
tory, and ruthless has become overwhelming. Its
conspiracies envelop the world. They have been
directed under the mask of friendship by official
diplomacy on our own soil. They lay under
tribute every quarter of the globe and seek part-
ners in crime in both hemispheres. Such a power
is the enemy of all mankind. At last the Ameri-
can people have come to understand this ; but they
have not, perhaps, even yet fully appreciated how
America will be affected by the fate of Europe,
for the fate of Europe will determine the fate of
the world.
246 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
The President of the United States has said:
"We have no quarrel with the German people. We
have no feeling toward them but one of sympathy and
friendship. It was not upon their impulse that their
Government acted in entering the war. It was not with
their previous knowledge or approval.
There is a commendable spirit of fairness in
these words; yet it should not be overlooked that
the German people are not without responsibility
for the war and for its consequences. It is an
error to suppose that the population of Germany
is the victim of a system of oppression against
which the people are in a state of mental revolt,
that they do not sympathize with their Govern-
ment, or that if they could, they would overthrow
it as the people of Russia have overthrown the
Romanoff autocracy. The German people have
profited greatly in an economic sense from the
creation of the empire; they believe in a strong
government, and they have passively accepted
without protest the Prussian domination. What
may be called the directing class — the class that
shapes and controls what passes for "public opin-
ion" in Germany — is virtually unanimous in its
support of the Hohenzollern dynasty, and it has
AMERICA'S INTEREST 247
its own reasons for this devotion, for the emperor
is a generous dispenser of honors, which Ger-
mans especially enjoy, and even has it in his power
to give financial credit as well as public position
to those whom he wishes to favor. The army and
navy have come to be recognized constituents of
the industrial and commercial system of the Ger-
man Empire to a degree that has no parallel in
any other country. They are regarded as the
tentacles of foreign trade, the prehensile forces
of national expansion. Add to this that every
able-bodied male in Germany is trained for war,
and taught that it is a "biological necessity," and
it becomes, perhaps, possible to comprehend why
the Imperial German Government has had — and
so long as its plans bring success will probably
continue to have — in whatever it does the support
of the German nation. Nothing but evident fail-
ure to realize its projects of annexation and to
satisfy the ambitions of the directing class can
destroy its hold upon the country.
There is in Germany a residue of feudalism
that exists to the same degree nowhere else in
Europe. In matters of public interest the Prus-
sian peasant is mere clay in the hands of his
248 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
Junker master. As much as possible — and his
grinding toil renders the task easy — he is kept in
ignorance of politics. To his simple mind the
kaiser acts, as he professes to act, under divine
direction, and all the peasant's religious convic-
tions and emotions thus become imperial property.
As a soldier he is a cheerful automaton, ready to
"goose-step" anywhere the command is given him
to go. As a citizen he is nil. When he votes he
takes his cue from "die Herrschaften," as he ob-
sequiously calls his superiors.
In the cities the industrial workers and their
leaders have developed a keen interest in political
matters, but their political ideas are frequently
nebulous and always largely theoretical, though
often accompanied by brave and honest convic-
tions for the most part suppressed. These are the
elements from which are formed the Social Demo-
crats. Occasionally the inner consciousness of
these men overflows in public utterance, some-
times in the Reichstag itself, as when Karl Lieb-
knecht said on December 2, 1914:
I refuse the war credits demanded, at the same time
protesting against the war, those responsible for it and
directing it, against the capitalist policy which has in-
AMERICA'S INTEREST 249
cited it, against the capitalist designs which it pursues,
against the plans of annexation, against the violation of
Belgian and Luxemburg neutrality, against the military
dictatorship, against the forgetfulness of social and politi-
cal duty of which the Government and the directing classes
still at this time render themselves culpable.
For this attitude Liebknecht, though a member
of the Reichstag, was sent to prison, and the text
of his speech was never printed by the German
newspapers. Those venturing to print it would
have been suppressed.
This violation of parliamentary immunity in
England, in France, or in the United States would
of itself occasion a popular uprising. In Ger-
many it sealed the lips of thousands who believed
as Liebknecht did. "We are not, as you are, in
the habit of reckoning with public opinion," said
one of the most distinguished of the younger men
in official life in Germany. "With us it does not
count for anything. Opinion has never had any
effect on policy. It resembles rather the chorus
of antiquity, which looks on and comments upon
an action unfolding around it. I should compare
it," he concludes, "to a crowd that follows, but is
not admitted to the game."
250 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
There is, of course, a difference between active
aggressors and those who, without discriminating
between their actions, give them loyal support.
But it is the consequences rather than the motives
of a national attitude with which other nations
have to deal. So long, therefore, as the German
people continue to support a war which their own
directing class in moments of frank utterance con-
fesses to be predatory, and still continues to advo-
cate, the rest of the world must treat them as
enemies not less than the Government which de-
rives its strength from their support.
What then is the testimony of the Germans
themselves regarding their aims and ambitions in
this war? In a book of more than four hundred
octavo pages, the Swiss publicist Grumbach has
collected "Documents Published or Secretly Cir-
culated in Germany Since August 4, 1914," bear-
ing upon the annexation of conquered territory.
In his preface he declares, "No competent person
can dispute the fact that the war aims of Germany
are of a nature to cause the greatest anxiety to the
entire world."
Although the Imperial Government avoids as
AMERICA'S INTEREST 251
much as possible committing itself to any definite
declaration of policy, it allows and even encour-
ages a popular demand for annexations and in-
demnities. Men of every party, of every class,
and of every profession possessing influence in
public affairs in Germany, have constantly voiced
the demand for annexations which the Pan-Ger-
manist literature had made before the war and
often in the same terms. The expectations of
spoils which rendered the war popular in Ger-
many in the beginning have during every stage
of its progress taken the form of urgency that
they be realized at its close.
Not knowing just how the war will end, the
Imperial Government dares not promise too much,
but it does not hesitate to keep alive a popular ap-
proval of any conquests which the forces at its
disposal may eventually enable it to make.
"Compare," writes Grumbach, "the passivity
which the authorities manifested when the Six
Great Industrial and Agrarian Leagues circu-
lated their famous annexationist petition without
encountering the least obstacle, with the confisca-
tion at the moment of its publication of the peti-
tion of the anti-annexationist league Neues Voter-
252 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
land, intended as a reply," followed by the grad-
ual strangling of the anti-annexationist league un-
der police surveillance, and the imprisonment of
its secretary.
It is important also to note that the territory
now claimed for annexation in the West is even
in excess of that marked out for conquest by the
Pan-German writers in 1911. "In the interest
of our own existence," says the petition, "we ought
to enfeeble France politically and economically,
without scruple, and to render our military and
strategic situation more favorable with regard to
it. We are convinced that, to secure that end, a
serious correction of our whole Western frontier,
from Belf ort to the coast, is necessary. We ought
to do everything possible to conquer a part of the
French coast, from the North to the Pas-de-Calais,
in order to be assured from a strategic point of
view against England, and to possess a better ap-
proach to the ocean." The German scientific ex-
perts, it is explained by one of the commentators
on this extension of the frontier, were not aware in
1871 of the vast treasures of coal and iron that
they had failed to claim !
The territory now demanded includes: in the
AMERICA'S INTEREST 253
West, the whole of Belgium and the frontier terri-
tories' of France, that is to say, the part of the
coast almost to the Somme, with a hinterland as-
suring the complete economic and strategic ex-
ploitation of a port on the Channel, the iron-mine
fields of Briey, the frontier fortresses with the
lines of the Meuse, especially Verdun and Bel-
fort, with the watershed west of the Vosges, be-
tween Verdun and Belfort; on the East, "at least"
parts of the Baltic provinces and the territories to
the South, in such a manner that the new acquisi-
tions would protect first of all the present Prus-
sian provinces the whole length of the frontiers of
Eastern Prussia, and also the length of the fron-
tiers of Western Prussia, of Posnania, and of
Silesia.
To. secure these advantages the six leagues
stated in their manifesto that they did not desire
a "premature peace"; for, "from such a peace,"
the petition runs, "one could not expect a suffi-
cient fruit of victory" !
But, in addition to the defined areas of con-
quest, there are certain indefinite aspirations here
set forth, "if it be possible to realize them"!
These include "a colonial empire which would
254 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
fully satisfy the manifold economic interests of
Germany, besides guarantees for our commercial
future and the securing of a sufficient war indem-
nity, paid in an appropriate form."
This definition of what the war is really for,
prepared in May, 1915, is signed by representa-
tives of the League of Agriculturists, the League
of German Peasants, the Directing Group of the
Christian Associations of German Peasants, the
Central Group of German Industrials, the League
of Industrials, and the Union of the Middle
Classes of the Empire, these being the six largest
and most powerful economic groups in Germany.
It is not pretended in this petition that the results
demanded have already been brought within the
power of the Imperial Government. It is a pro-
gram of aims to be achieved before the war closes,
and a confessed enlargement of the purposes with
which it was begun. "These exigencies," it ex-
pressly states, "it is needless to say, depend upon
the possibility that the army may realize them."
The reasons for these additional conquests are
not that Belgium and France have forfeited these
territories by making an attack upon Germany.
The iron- and coal-fields specified are said to be
AMERICA'S INTEREST 255
"indispensable not only for the existence of our
industrial power, but they constitute military ne-
cessities"; that is, they are desired as new bases
for future military activity. It is pointed out
that "neutral industrial States are constrained to
make themselves the tools of that one of the bel-
ligerents that can assure them a supply of coal."
By possessing all the coal in Western Europe,
Germany can better exercise that restraint. Ger-
many, it is urged, has already been "obliged to
have recourse to the Belgian production, in order
to prevent our neutral neighbors from becoming
dependent on England." Besides, in Belgium,
it is explained, are found also "the fundamental
elements of our principal explosives"; and "ben-
zol, the only substitute for benzine, which we lack,
and this is indispensable for submarines."
For these reasons Belgium and Northwestern
France must belong to Germany. The native
populations of these districts, it is insisted, "shall
not be put in a position to obtain a political influ-
ence upon the destinies of the German Empire."
It is also urged that "the existing means of eco-
nomic power in these territories, including the
medium and the great properties, shall be placed
256 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
in the hands of Germans, in a manner that shall
require France to indemnify and recall the pro-
prietors"!
Were these encouragements to depredation and
conquest merely the spontaneous expression of the
desires of these signatories, or were they indirectly
inspired by the Imperial Government itself, with
a view to making its conduct seem like the exe-
cution of a popular mandate? It is impossible
conclusively to answer this question ; but the atti-
tude of the Imperial Government is certainly not
one of hostility to the most extreme of these de-
mands. The emperor, whose stake in this game
is the greatest of all, is the least definite in state-
ment ; but his words might be interpreted as ultra-
annexationist if circumstances should make that
course seem expedient. He has expressed his de-
sire for "a peace which would offer us the military,
political, and economic guarantees of which we
have need for the future, and which would fulfil
all the conditions necessary to a free employment
of our creative forces, at home as well as upon the
sea." The King of Bavaria expressly wishes "a
gate of exit direct from the Rhine to the sea,"
with "an enlargement of the Empire beyond its
AMERICA'S INTEREST 257
present frontiers." The Duke of Mecklenburg
demands "a powerful colonial empire in Africa,
and a sufficient number of solid points d'appui
on the terrestrial globe for our marine and our
commerce, coaling stations and stations for wire-
less telegraphy." The former imperial chan-
cellor, Bethmann-Hollweg, shrewdly limits his
expectations to "all the powers and all the real
guarantees possible"; but these, he insists, "must
secure for Germany a position unshakably
strong." The secretary for colonies, Dr. Solf,
wishes the empire "to possess colonies in all the
climatic zones, but without prejudice to possible
territorial gains in Europe." The Prussian min-
ister of the interior, Loebell, thinks, "The Ger-
man empire ought to open a road by fire and blood
to the point where it may fulfil its mission of
world politics."
In the same spirit, but often much more defi-
nitely, speak innumerable privy counsellors, mem-
bers of the Reichstag, university professors, mili-
tary officers, diplomatists, and pastors, whose
views are repeated and generally applauded by
the press, with the exception of the Social Demo-
cratic organs, from the daily newspapers to the
258 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
serious reviews. The evidence is absolutely over-
whelming that from the first months of the war
the directing classes of Germany have been eager
for territorial conquests.
In order to give some appearance of justice to
these plans for imperial expansion at the expense
of Belgium and France, the legend of a "con-
spiracy" to attack Germany and destroy her, of
which England is charged with being the insti-
gator, and France, Belgium, and Russia the eager
instruments, has been persistently propagated in
Germany and in the United States. As a penalty,
runs the legend, for bringing this dreadful scourge
of war upon peace-loving Germany, these guilty
nations must repay her for the terrible sacrifices
made by her brave sons and loyal subjects, who
have given their lives and their treasures for the
defense of the Fatherland. Not only territories,
but money indemnities, are expected; and these
last the imperial chancellor, as late as February
27, 1917, asserted are "necessary." This Gov-
ernment, which declared war on Russia and
France; which ordered the invasion of Belgium;
which authorized Austria-Hungary to subjugate
AMERICA'S INTEREST 259
Serbia; which in July, 1914, rejected the pro-
posals of Serbia and the Czar to submit the Aus-
tro-Serbian question to the Hague Tribunal;
which has ruined and depopulated Belgium, an-
nihilated Serbia, and devastated Poland, — this
Government expects "indemnities for the wrongs
inflicted upon Germany"; and, to give this ex-
tortion a color of justice, holds these countries up
as the guilty culprits !
Note, for example, the attempt to heap calum-
nies upon Belgium for acting in self-defense.
"Deputy Hirsch [Social Democrat]," cries the
National-Liberal deputy, Dr. Friedberg, in the
Prussian Landtag, in January, 1916, — "Deputy
Hirsch desires that the political and economic in-
dependence of Belgium be restored. But we have
no right to forget that Belgium was in no respect
the neutral country it appeared to be on August
2, 1914" 7 And so a man who has been assas-
sinated in his bed is to have his house plundered
because it was discovered during the murder that
he had tried to make previous arrangements with
his neighbors for his protection against this very
crime !
Germany, it is said, did not desire war. But
260 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
listen to Major-General Von Gebsattel, an emi-
nent soldier-diplomat, who is not afraid to confess
the truth to his fellow-officers. In October, 1915,
he said:
We have not wished the war to try seriously this time the
efficiency of our quick-firing cannons and bur machine-
guns — of that we had a very exact idea, particularly we
old soldiers; — we wished it because we understood our
people were on the wrong road in their development, be-
cause we considered the war a necessity, and because we
were besides aware that a war is easier — as much in its
military course as for its minimum of sacrifices — when
a people, in every fashion constrained to struggle for its
existence, is more resolute and more prompt to choose the
moment favorable for aggression.
Here is no attempt to conceal the fact that the
present war was not only desired by the German
officers, but that the time for it was opportunely
chosen, yet not without serious miscalculations,
and the whole progress of the war has shown how
groundless and how ignoble the accusation of an
international conspiracy is.
Realizing the futility of the conspiracy legend,
the theologian Mumm, a Christian-Socialist
deputy to the Reichstag, in the Berliner Neueste
Nachrichten, recommends that the conquest be
AMERICA'S INTEREST 261
justified to the Germans and to the world by show-
ing that historically, at some time in the past,
Belgium — which he describes as "a mere poli-
tical concept due to chance and the pis-aller of
embarrassed diplomats" — and the other coveted
lands were once parts of the German Empire.
"Dip into the past," he urges, "in order to write
that which should be known at present : the read-
ers will understand well what inferences to draw,
when it is not possible to expose them openly."
A truly ingenious method of concealing a cold-
blooded national crime!
In some quarters it is considered almost trea-
sonable to the empire to question the rectitude of
forcible annexation. Calling to account the
former secretary for the colonies, Dr. Bernhard
Dernburg, for assuring the people of the United
States, where he was on mission in May, 1915,
that the promise of the imperial chancellor to re-
store the independence of Belgium after the war
would be kept, the Tagliche Rundschau declared
for home consumption: "If Herr Dernburg has
really offered to our enemies — or the same as
enemies — the voluntary evacuation of Belgium,
that would be an unheard-of audacity, against
262 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
which it would be necessary to direct the most
vehement protest. If he has, in fact, said that
Germany cannot think of increasing its territory
in Europe, that would be on his part an extraordi-
nary presumption! " And the Leipziger Neueste
Nachrickten, ridiculing the statement attributed
to Dr. Dernburg that Germany would not forcibly
subjugate neighboring peoples, doubts that he
really made such a statement; for, it declares,
"such a criterion would put an end to all political
development and to all colonization."
The orthodox German doctrine on that sub-
ject, it seems, was stated by the chief of the Na-
tional-Liberal party, Herr Bassermann, as early
as December, 1914, when he said in the Reich-
stag: "We shall hold till the most remote future
the countries fertilized by German blood. . . .
We shall be able to keep what we have acquired,
and to acquire in addition that of which we have
need."
But we do not reach the final formula of Ger-
man tribal ambition until we have received it
from the chief of the Free Conservative party in
the Prussian Landtag, Herr Zedlitz-Neukirch.
He said:
AMERICA'S INTEREST 263
If the peace we aim at is to be durable, all the ter-
ritorial acquisitions which the General Staff deems neces-
sary to shield us from the danger of a future war must
be secured by that peace; and no regard for our adver-
saries, their country, or their people, should prevent our im-
posing these conditions, least of all the so-called right of
the inhabitants of the territories that are to be conquered
to dispose of themselves.
The purposes for which the war was begun
having failed of accomplishment through an un-
expected obstinacy of resistance on the part of the
Entente Allies, the problem of negotiating a peace
has become a serious one for the Imperial Ger-
man Government. Not to make any annexations
or collect any indemnities beyond the levies ex-
torted from Belgium and Poland during military
occupation, would signify a defeat of the Ger-
man plans. To this kind of a settlement all
those responsible for the war quite naturally ob-
ject, and desire no relinquishment of territory
occupied and no abatement of frightfulness, in
the hope that the Allies may soon be disunited or
exhausted, thus leaving Germany the victor.
The Hohenzollern dynasty, having taken the re-
sponsibility of this vast predatory enterprise,
cannot, however, save its face without showing
264 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
some justification for the "sacrifices" imposed
upon the people of Germany. So long as the
Allies continue their opposition, this embarrass-
ment will endure; and in the meantime two
changes are occurring in the minds of the German
people: a growing weariness of the war as a re-
sult of exhaustion, and a gradual enlightenment
regarding the responsibility for a war which the
mass of the German people believed at its begin-
ning was forced upon the empire by a combina-
tion of hostile powers. As a result, the desire
for peace even without annexations and indem-
nities at first insisted upon by a group of Social
Democrats is rapidly becoming the sentiment of
the country, with the exception of the Junker
class and the military and industrial imperialists,
whose very existence as a dominating caste in
the empire depends upon the continued alliance
of private business with dynastic and military
power. Between these instigators of predatory
war and the peace-loving people of Germany the
former imperial chancellor, Bethmann-Hollweg,
anxious to save the dynasty, hesitated to formulate
the Imperial Government's terms of peace, and
to the end of his administration he adhered to
AMERICA'S INTEREST 265
his ambiguous formula, "All the pawns and all
the real guarantees possible."
The embarrassment is not, and is not likely
to be, greatly relieved by changes in the persons
holding office under the house of Hohenzollern.
The aims and interests always remain the same,
and the naming by the emperor of new ministers
serves only to postpone the real issues of reform
and the definition of policy. It means little that
the Reichstag has by a large majority declared,
"We are driven by no lust of conquest," or that
it professes to repudiate "forced acquisitions of
territory and political, economic, and financial
violations," for the Reichstag is not the Imperial
German Government. On the contrary, it has
again and again vindicated its title to be called
a "hall of echoes." Installed in the seat of power
by the military party, the successor of Bethmann-
Hollweg, Dr. Michaelis, speaking with all the
authority of the emperor in what the family coun-
cils have decided to be the interest of the dynasty,
has said, "The constitutional rights of the head
of the Empire must not be endangered, and I am
not willing to -permit any one to take the reins
out of my hands."
266 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
Impotent as the Reichstag may be as an ex-
pression of the will of the German people, one
fact is evident, and is of the highest importance:
the Imperial Government is confronted with a
greater problem in the making of peace than it
has ever had to face in the prosecution of the
war. The reason for this is that the Imperial
Government can no longer conceal the alliance
between predatory business and military power
which brought on the war.
Between the demand on the one side that the
real objects of the war be fulfilled by annexa-
tions, and on the other that the professions of
the Imperial Government that it was purely de-
fensive be established in the making of peace,
the house of Hohenzollern is loaded with a heavy
responsibility. It cannot safely disappoint
the alliance between the army and the preda-
tory class; and it cannot conveniently confess to
the loyal subjects who have believed its profes-
sions and been brought to the brink of ruin by
the war, that it has deliberately deceived them.
Yet this is the choice that lies before it.
The peril of the situation is frankly confessed
by at least one German statesman of the highest
AMERICA'S INTEREST 267
character, Prince Alexander von Hohenlohe.
His wise and brave utterances are worthy of the
son of the imperial German chancellor, who in
1899, during the first Hague Conference — at the
instance of the American ambassador at Berlin
and first delegate to the conference, Hon. Andrew
D. White, who sent a messenger to Berlin for the
purpose — warned the emperor of the lasting in-
jury he would inflict upon Germany if he al-
lowed the German delegates to block the pro-
posals for the formation of an international
tribunal, — as they had been instructed to do, —
and succeeded in obtaining a reluctant with-
drawal of open opposition.
Prince von Hohenlohe, with similar foresight,
takes the ground, that jockeying for spoils of war,
instead of frankly stating Germany's desire for
peace, is a shortsighted policy. He holds that
for the German people, as for all others, the
highest and the only true reward for the sac-
rifices made in the war is the assurance of an en-
during peace; and such a peace cannot be based
on the spoils of war which Chancellor von Beth-
mann-Hollweg and his successor are hoping to
secure, but must be founded upon a just and hon-
268 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
orable settlement which will leave behind it no
sentiments of future revenge. Nothing, he holds,
could in reality so strengthen the empire, within
as well as without, as the establishment of such a
peace.
The German people, he believes, when fully
instructed, will draw the proper lessons from the
war. It may be well for them, he thinks, to real-
ize that their own government was in the first
place responsible for the war; but, he contends,
they will not permit foreign interference in their
political organization.
It required more than ordinary courage for
the prince to say publicly, in reply to the clerical
deputy, Spahn:
Without doubt, the majority of the German nation is
still monarchist. The different peoples of Germany still
hold to their princes, more or less, according to the in-
dividual character of the sovereigns. But that confidence
in the supreme chief of the Empire is still entirely intact
is an affirmation which, after three years of war, cannot
be maintained. . . . Confidence in the direction of the Em-
pire has begun to disappear among the German people.
. . . They begin to ask themselves how it happens that
nearly all the world is in arms against us, and who is
responsible for it.
AMERICA'S INTEREST 269
With regard to the attitude of the German
masses toward terms of peace, the prince pro-
ceeds to say:
The German people as a whole do not demand the
annexation of foreign territories. Only little groups of in-
dustrials and the superheated Pan-Germans, who are not
recruited from the masses of the population, but from the
circles of professors, functionaries, and burghers, desire
annexations. Herr Scheidemann has been called to or-
der because he pronounced the word "Revolution" from the
tribune in the Reichstag. And yet he has only repeated
what may be heard every day on the street. He also
added, "We have not yet arrived at that point." But it
would be puerile to dissimulate what might come of it,
if the men who hold in their hands the destinies of the
German Empire are not of sufficient proportions to carry
the responsibilities that are placed upon them, to recognize
the necessities of the new times, and to take account of
them. In that case the moment might well come when
they would recognize with terror that it is too late, and
that the German people have finally lost patience.
While the war lasts it will be difficult for any-
German to oppose the Imperial Government, but
it is evident that there are in Germany inevitable
tendencies toward profound political changes.
The nature and extent of these will depend largely
upon the results of the war. If the Allies were
270 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
overcome or disunited, the triumph of autocracy
would be complete. No one in Germany could
resist the effect of victorious armies returning in
triumph from the field and a peace dictated by
successful imperialism. On the other hand, the
house of Hohenzollern is preparing for a different
contingency. The emperor, always sensitive to
deep-seated popular movements, notwithstanding
his strident proclamations that his royal preroga-
tives are "from God alone," has already pro-
posed "a people's kingdom of the Hohenzollerns,"
in the faith, it would appear, that a right con-
ferred by the people might be better than none
at all, and with a growing suspicion that the
people, in the end, if the armies are beaten, will
be more powerful than he has supposed them
to be. In that case, it would be as expedient to
disavow new ministers as it was to end the tight-
rope performance of Bethmann-Hollweg. The
negotiations for reform would have only to be re-
sumed, for this house of Hohenzollern is a shrewd
race of traders, which from a Swabian lordship
over a village of peasants has known how to raise
itself to the eminence of empire by an alterna-
tion of bloodshed and bargain, and would per-
AMERICA'S INTEREST 271
haps rather reign by the will of the people than
to follow in the footsteps of the Romanoff retire-
ment.
With what ease in an extremity the Imperial
Government might carry on negotiations for "a
people's kingdom of the Ilohenzollerns" is illus-
trated by the interest taken when the same Herr
Scheidemann who pronounced the word "Revolu-
tion" in the Reichstag was engaged with approval
in sounding through socialistic channels the pos-
sibilities of a separate peace with Russia, and
won even from the annexationist press the com-
pliment that he "was in a fair way to become a
statesman." Yet it was Herr Scheidemann who
had boldly enunciated the doctrine that "the an-
nexation of the territory of a foreign population
constitutes a violation of the right of peoples to
dispose of themselves." This would be new doc-
trine to the house of Hohenzollern; but, if the
army should fail, it would not be surprising if
the world were given to understand that the em-
peror, as some have contended, had been forced
into the war by his own officers and their con-
federates against his will! The historian may
some day be able to produce the evidence that this
272 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
is true. If this should prove to be the case, it
would be the end of Prussianism, but would it
not be the end of imperialism also?
Whatever may be the disclosures of the future,
it cannot be doubted that this is the main issue
of the Great War — the right of peoples to dis-
pose of themselves. If this fundamental right
is conceded, there is a solid foundation for the
new Europe when the peace congress meets to
determine the future; for this right involves the
repudiation of autocracy, giving the state an
ethical basis, and at the same time implies the
existence of the inherent obligation of every peo-
ple to respect that right in others.
Unhappily, this doctrine has not yet been
clearly enunciated as a principle of public law.
In Germany it is still disputed. The eminent
professor of law in the University of Berlin, Dr.
Joseph Kohler, writes:
The irresistible force of war and conquest takes posses-
sion of countries and peoples. That is one of the funda-
mental principles of international law, and it suffices to
make litter of the old sentimentalities. ... It is need-
less to be disquieted over the superfluous sentiment regard-
ing a plebiscite, in virtue of which it is of importance to
AMERICA'S INTEREST 273
consult the population to know if it wishes to belong to one
state or another. The territory carries with it the popu-
lation that inhabits it; the individual who is not satisfied
has only to quit the territory of the State. . . . The ra-
tional assent of a people has hardly any sense; the im-
pulsive forces of the popular soul repose the greater part
of the time below the threshold of reason and reflection.
Thus it is all reduced to force, an inflexible domination.
This is Prussianism, which is at once a philoso-
phy, an institution, and above all an army. It
is the apotheosis of autocratic power. It has
created the Prussian state, and the logical policy
of the Prussian state is the domination of the
world. "World dominion or downfall" — that is
the declared alternative that runs through the
desperate plotting and remorseless barbarism with
which Prussia is leading to ruin one of the great-
est nations on the earth.
Historically, Prussia may justly claim that Eu-
rope has never formally repudiated the doctrine
of the right of conquest, and that virtually every
state has at some time practised it. This can-
not be disputed, and it is important that it should
not be forgotten, for the time has now arrived to
determine permanently whether arbitrary force or
the generally accepted principles of justice are to
274 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
constitute the basis of European civilization. If
the Central powers are to be judged by their con-
duct, and the Allied powers by their professions,
this is really the fundamental issue between them.
If the future of Europe and of the civilized world
is to rest upon the assumption that a powerful
state, in order to satisfy its economic ambitions,
may take possession of the territory and people
of a weaker state by military force, and appro-
priate the land and the people to its purposes, then
all Europe and all the world is already Prussian-
ized in principle and will soon be Prussianized
in fact. It would be encouraging to believe that
only the Central Powers and their Turkish and
Bulgarian allies accept this principle.
It was the menaced application of the Prussian
theory of international relationship to the United
States that finally clarified the vision of the Amer-
ican people and enabled them to perceive that neu-
trality toward an empire holding, practising, and
plotting to extend and perpetuate that theory is
impossible. They had hesitated to avenge their
dead, cruelly slaughtered on the high seas; they
had been reluctant to join in what seemed to be a
European quarrel ; they believed that the German
AMERICA'S INTEREST 275
nation would itself rise in denunciation of such
enormities as it had been led into perpetrating;
they waited long for this in the faith that a whole
people — a people that had risen to such heights
of excellence in many forms of civilization — could
not always be blinded by leaders who defied all
the nations of the earth to check what they deemed
to be their irresistible force; but thus far they
have waited in vain.
Those who best know Germany and the Ger-
mans do not look for a general revolution while
the German armies are not beaten in the field.
Revolt against the existing system is not only ex-
tremely perilous for the persons who may pro-
pose it, but it is in the German character to be
loyal to the Imperial Government while their
country is believed to be still in peril. Not until
the whole ghastly truth dawns upon them regard-
ing the atrocities committed in their name, how
they themselves have been deceived; what cruel
wrongs have been done to their sons and brothers
in leading them to the shambles for the acquisi-
tion of ports, and mines, and war indemnities, and
that this has brought only disaster, debt, and
shame upon them, will the German people cry
276 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
out for a more responsible control of their own
destinies and a reorganization of international life
upon a basis of peace through justice. Already
isolated voices have been heard demanding these
changes. The protests have come mainly from
the Social Democrats, but it is not they alone who
are aware that Germany stands before the rest
of the world as a convicted culprit whose good
name has been lost through an unholy alliance
between private greed and the weird priest-craft
of divine prerogative, a partnership which has
decked out an altar of sacrifice in the name of re-
ligion in order to give to military power a sacra-
mental sanction for the commission of wholesale
crime.
That which has made it possible for this al-
liance to obtain the support of the German people
is the representation that Germany is the victim
of the selfish designs of other powers, and that a
fair field for German industry and commerce and
the safety of Germany from future attack could
be secured only by fighting. So long as this is
believed to be true, the Imperial Government will
not improbably be able to command support even
AMERICA'S INTEREST 277
from those who do not approve of aggressive de-
signs on the part of Germany.
The pathway to peace therefore leads in the
direction of better guarantees of justice to all na-
tions. So long as purely national interests are
made preeminent, military rivalry will be con-
sidered justified. It is therefore to be desired
that the fruits of victory in this war shall be in-
ternational fruits. No nation should be per-
mitted in the great settlement to place its private
interests above the general welfare. Each na-
tion involved in the Great War had, no doubt,
its own special national interests to serve in en-
tering it; but it cannot truthfully be said that
the Entente Allies had ends in view that were not
just. Russia was vindicating the right of Serbia
to a judicial hearing. France was Russia's ally
and a designated victim of German attack. Eng-
land was a pledged defender of Belgian neutrality,
and Belgium was ruthlessly subjugated in viola-
tion of solemn treaty obligations made to the
United States as well as to the European powers.
America's entrance into the war was a response to
repeated warlike aggressions and secret plots di-
278 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
rected against its industries, its neutral rights,
and its territorial integrity. As the President has
well said: "We have no selfish ends to serve.
We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek
no indemnities for ourselves, no material compen-
sation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We
are but one of the champions of the rights of man-
kind." But this championship of the highest
human interests would be illusory and nugatory
if the treaties of peace were in any respect embodi-
ments of the doctrines against which we are con-
tending, no matter in whose interest they might
be invoked. The cause for which we are fight-
ing would be lost if there remained in the field any
bully or any braggart reasserting a right to claim
territory or to enslave a people on the mere ground
of conquest by superior military force. The
American people are not participating in this
struggle for the purpose of setting any European
nation above another.
There will be questions of reparation, of
restoration, and of guarantees for the future, but
these adjudications should be made on judicial
principles and not merely on military grounds.
AMERICA'S INTEREST 279
Claims for damages and for advantages made by
the belligerents might very well be submitted to
the judgment of others before they are pressed as
final conditions of settlement. If there is to be
a durable peace, the idea of internationalizing
the results of the war must receive an immense
development. The victory of the Allies will not
belong to one, but to all; and the sooner the fact
of community of interest and a disposition to
submit to collective judgment can be established
in the minds of the belligerents, the sooner will
peace be possible, and the more just and lasting it
will be. Only in this spirit can the seas and
oceans of the world be made freely accessible and
safe for all nations. Many routes of transit that
have hitherto been closed to the nations shut off
from the sea will need to be opened, and the back-
ward nations of the world must be treated as the
wards in common of those more advanced in
civilization.
Nothing could contribute more effectually to a
termination of the war than a frank disavowal
of exclusive national gains. The exemplary
spirit of renunciation manifested by Russia and
the known absence of selfish purposes on the part
280 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
of the United States might well inspire such a dis-
avowal. A clear statement of the principles of
public law which it is desirable to establish for
the future, with a solemn compact to observe and
sustain them, would be an appropriate prelimi-
nary to the negotiations for peace. The whole
world would then be in a position to express its
voluntary adherence to those principles. Such
a compact would necessarily involve the repudia-
tion of the right of conquest for the purpose of
acquiring territory by military force from an in-
dependent state, and its infamous corollary that
the population goes with the land and becomes
subject to the will of the conqueror; for the only
foundation upon which Europe can be recon-
structed as a society of states is the inviolability
of its law-abiding members.
History will judge the nations involved in the
Great War much less by the motives with which
they profess to have entered into it than by the
results they finally bring out of it.
If the signatories of the treaty of peace base
its terms upon secret compacts for aggrandize-
ment, and go forth from the peace congress with
new secret engagements in their pockets, the idea
AMERICA'S INTEREST 281
of a new Europe will prove but a dream, and it
will be with the old Europe in a new guise that
America will still have to live.
The American people will doubtless support
their Government in joining a league of peace,
but they will expect from it a genuine purpose of
peace and not an occasion for brewing new con-
flicts into which the United States or other Amer-
ican countries would be drawn.
At least one English writer has hastily assumed
that
President Wilson has offered to guarantee a league of
peace and to back international treaties by the promise
that America will in the last resort intervene against the
aggressor and the treaty-breaker. In other words, she
stands security for such treaties in the future. Her inter-
vention is a new fact, a guarantee of a kind with which the
past was unacquainted.
Such a guarantee would, indeed, be "a new
fact," but of a kind with which the future also
is likely to be unacquainted. The President has
of course made no such pledge. No intelligent
statesman would "stand security" — knowing how
treaties are sometimes made — for treaties he had
not previously approved.
282 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE
A league of peace there will no doubt be; but
such a league cannot at the same time be a league
for future wars, either in the military or the
economic sense. Guarantees must be required
from all and equally, but the best guarantee will
be a new community of interest, based on the
award to each signatory of the treaty of peace
of equal rights and the requirement of equal
duties.
The American people desire to oppose aggres-
sion and treaty-breaking; but, if they are wise,
they will not pledge their Government, under the
pretext of enforcing peace, either to make war
on other nations, or to submit to war as a legal
act if made upon itself, in circumstances wholly
unknown at the time when the covenant for peace
is made.
The true wisdom is for America to associate
itself in good faith with the forces that seek for
peace with justice in the world; but, in order to
perform effectively its part, the first duty is always
to be able to defend itself.
INDEX
Absolutism, 13-16
Agrarian leagues, 25 1
Alldeutscher Verband, 91
Althusius, Johannes, on sover-
eignty, 17-18
Annexations proposed by Ger-
many, 250-262
Armaments, limitation of, 125-
126
Austin, John, referred to, 51
Australia, 117
Austria-Hungary, as part of
Central Europe, 153-165
the weak point in Prussia's
plans, 168
Autocracy, cases of, 227-228
indictment of, 214-215
mysticism of, 216-217
subsists on war, 231
wanting a moral foundation,
221
Backward nations, 279
Bagdad railway, referred to,
169, 126
Balkan States, future fate of
the, 155, 169, 237
Bassermann, German deputy,
quoted, 262
Belgium, invasion of, 77
future fate of, 169
neutrality of, 277
retention of by Germany, 259
283
Berchtold, Count, telegram
from, 129
Bethmann-Hollweg, referred to,
170, 172, 257, 258, 264,
265
Bismarck, Prince von, referred
to, 86, 87, 98, 140, 142,
152, 166
Bodin, Jean, referred to, 15
Bonaparte, Napoleon, referred
to, 15, 117, 176
British Empire, creation of, 36
neutrality of expected, 126-
127
transformation of, 115-116,
121
Bryce, Viscount, quoted or re-
ferred to, 108-109, 114
Biilow, Prince von, quoted or
referred to, 85-103, 141-142
Bundesrat, powers of the Ger-
man, 143-144
Byzantinism in Germany, 144
Canada, 117-119
Catherine II, attitude regard-
ing Poland, 77
Central Europe, referred to,
151-157, 161-169
Cheradame, Andre, referred to,
102
China, interventions in, 121,
184
284
INDEX
Christendom, failure of to
unite Europe, 3-4, 10, 27
Coal, importance of to political
control, 255
Commerce, relation of to peace
and war, 24—35
Commonwealth of nations, a
vision of a, 104
Conferences, how organized,
188, 190, 192
of business men, 204-206
See also The Hague Confer-
ences
Conquest, the right of, 20-22,
273
Constantinople, the fall of, 3
Courts, international, 68, 193-
195
Cruce, Emeric, referred to,
175
Cuba, Germany's desire to pos-
sess, 99
Culture, the true nature of, 64-
66
Curia, the Roman, 4
Czar of Russia, the, telegram
from, 127
referred to, 137
no alliance of with autoc-
racy, 226
the testing time of, 116, 133
the war of, 108-111
Dernberg, Dr. Bernhard, re-
ferred to, 261-262
Diplomacy, the function of,
199
Divine right, the dogma of,
228, 276
Dominions, the British, 117-
119
Dreadnaughts, the first building
of, 125
Dynasties, abolition of, 8
secret solidarity of, 9
struggle of with feudalis-n,
12
Economic imperialism, 170,
200-203, 229
Egypt, British attitude in, 125
"Encirclement" of Germany, al-
leged policy of, 98, 125,
258
Entente Allies, aims of, 84-85,
109-110, 120, 274, 277
Evolution, political, 67
Daily Telegraph, referred to,
142
Declaration of Independence,
omission of sovereignty in,
179-180
Democracy, a basis for interna-
tional law, 227
a constructive principle, 208
dangers of, 32
involves a principle of self-
abnegation, 221-222
Faustrecht, 4
Fenelon, quoted, 175
Fetials, college of, 9
Feudalism, character of, 12
Fichte, referred to, 46
Fisher, Mr. Andrew, quoted,
119
Frederick II, of Prussia, quoted
or referred to, 77, 166
"Freedom of the seas," mean-
ing of, 122
INDEX
285
Friedberg, German deputy, re-
ferred to, 259
French Revolution, referred to,
15, 19, 46
Gebsattel, Major-General von,
quoted, 260
George III, attitude toward
Poland, 77
George V, referred to, 130
German Emperor, declaration
of war by the, 127
powers ascribed to the, 141
See also William II
German Empire, aspiration for
world power by the, 122—
124
constitution of the, 143-144
efficiency of the in war, 147
the transfiguration of the,
136-142, 145-146, 153, 171
"Germanic liberties," referred
to, 140
Government, the purpose of, 44
ownership as an economic
corporation, 24
Greater Germany, 93-96
Greece, the future fate of, 169
Greek Empire, the fall of the,
4-5
Grey, Sir Edward, telegrams
from, 128-129
Grotius, Hugo, referred to, 13
Grumbach, S., publicist, quoted,
250
Guarantees of peace, 278, 281-
282
Hague Conferences, The, 20,
83, 125, 136-137, 189-191
Hamburg to Bagdad route, see
Bagdad railway
Hapsburg, house of, referred to,
8, 154
Harms, Professor, referred to,
151
Hegel, referred to, 42-52, 63,
139
Helgoland, 124
Hirsch, German deputy, re-
ferred to, 259
Hohenlohe, Prince Alexander,
quoted, 267-269
Hohenzollern, house of, re-
ferred to, 89, 246, 263-
266, 270-271
Holland, future fate of, 155,
169
Holy Alliance, the, 19, 178
Holy Roman Empire of the
German Nation, 154
Humanism, struggle of with
tribalism, 5, 10
Ideals, international, 38, 41, 66
Imperialism, dynastic, 73-74
economic, 68-69, 70-71, 84,
120-121
See also Economic imperial-
ism
Industrialism, modern, 24, 30-
35
International ideals, the real-
ization of, 66
Internationalism, repudiation of
by Germany, 138, 148-149
International law, development
of, 27
existence of, 56-57
not wholly disregarded, 58-
62
286
INDEX
limitations of, 193, 198-199,
204
International organization, 40,
172-174, 187
International right, repudiated
by Tannenberg, 96
defied by absolutism, 182-
183
International unions, 199-200
Japan, referred to, 241, 244
Judicial decisions, enforcement
of, 196-197
See also Courts
Kant, quoted or referred to, 14,
43-50, 176
Kiel Canal, referred to, 124
Kohler, Dr. Joseph, quoted, 272
Kultur, the "holy" mission of,
90-91, 166
See also Culture
Law, origin of, 215-216'
nature of, 49, 61
supremacy of, 4
See also International law
Law, Mr. Bonar, referred to,
115
Laws, of struggle, survival, and
selection, 173
League to enforce peace, 176,
281
"Liberty of national evolution,''
meaning of, 122
Liebknecht, Karl, quoted or re-
ferred to, 248-249
Liszt, Franz von, quoted, 122
Loebell, German minister, re-
ferred to, 257
Locke, referred to, 14
Louis XIV, referred to, 175
Louis XV, attitude on Poland,
77
Lycurgus, "the modern," 175
Machiavelli, referred to, 11, 21,
22
Maria Theresa, attitude on
Poland, 78
Mark Brandenburg, referred to,
151
Marriage, effect of in forming
nation-states, 8
Mexico, referred to, 241, 244
Gulf of, 100
Meyer, Professor Edward,
quoted or referred to, 136-
138, 141-142, 146-149
Michaelis, German chancellor,
declaration of, 265
Militarism, alliance of with in-
dustry and commerce, 30-
31, 34-35
Mittel-Europa, referred to,
151-152
Moltke, Field-marshal von, re-
ferred to, 166
Montesquieu, referred to, 14,
175
Muir, Professor Ramsey,
quoted, 121
Mumm, German deputy, quoted
260-261
Nation, what is a? 226
National monarchies, 5, 6, 12
Nation-states, formation of 6
not accidents, 7
not of pure race, 7
unity of, 7
INDEX
287
Naumann, Dr. Friedrich, Ger-
man deputy, quoted or re-
ferred to, 151-169
Neues Vaterland, anti-annexa-
tionist league, 251
Neutrality, nature of, 21-22
New Zealand, 117
"Open door," the, 206
Ottoman Empire, establishment
of in Europe, 3
future fate of, 169
reference to, 111, 244
Palace of peace, 137
Pan-German propaganda, 146,
151, 191, 251-252
Pax Romana, 4
Peace congress of the future,
158
enforcement of, 62, 63, 197,
281-282
first article of a treaty of,
134-135
repudiation of by Tannen-
berg, 93
the pathway to, 277
under absolutism an ''empty
dream," 48
Penn, William, referred to, 175
Personality, as a basis of rights,
43, 50, 223
claims of, 65
development of, 63
Phillips, Alison, quoted, 178
Poland, partition of, 77
Protection of citizens abroad,
duty of, 202-203
Prussia, domination of, 88-91,
141-151, 166-169
King of German emperor,
143
official philosophy of, 103
origin of, 150
Prussianism, denned, 273
Prussian peasant, political igno-
rance of the, 247-248
Reparation after the war, 278
Restoration, after the war, 278
Reichstag, Declaration by the
German, 265
limited powers of the Ger-
man, 143-144, 266
Rhodes, Cecil, referred to, 154
Rights, the foundation of, 51
Roman law, 4, 9, 12
republic and unjust wars, 9
effects of, 4, 5
Romanoff dynasty, the, referred
to, 246
Rousseau, J. J., referred to, 14
Russia, revolution in, 115, 246,
279
Saint-Pierre, the Abbe de, re-
ferred to, 176
Sarajevo, the assassination at,
112
Sazanoff, Mr., telegram from,
128-129
Scandinavian Kingdoms, the
future fate of the, 155, 169,
237
Scheidemann, Herr, German
deputy, 269, 271
Seeley, Sir John, referred to, 36
Sifton, Sir Clifford, quoted, 116
Six Great Leagues, for an-
nexation, referred to, 251,
254
288
INDEX
"Social consciousness," 220
Social Democrats, in Germany,
248, 257, 264, 276
"Social solidarity," 219
Society of States, a real, 106-
107
Solf, Dr., German colonial
minister, referred to, 257
Sovereignty, absolute concep-
tion of, 12, 14, 16
Althusius' conception of, 17-
18
as substance of the State,
10
consequences of the absolute
conception of, 27
definition of, 14
idea of unchanged by French
Revolution, 24
in American sense, 179-181,
188
in constitutional states, 55-
56
necessary limitation of, 183-
184, 188, 191
reconstruction of the idea of,
234
South Africa, 117
Spahn, Dr., German deputy, re-
ferred to, 268
Spencer, Herbert, referred to,
30
State, a business corporation,
31-32
absolute conception of the,
12-13
democratic conception of the,
217-219
fiduciary function of the, 153
fundamental function of the,
54
irresponsibility of the, in the
absolutist conception, 26
modern demands upon the, 29
nature of the modern na-
tional, 25
Professor Meyer's concep-
tion of the German, 138,
139
revised views of the, 79
theories of the, 41, 42, 43, 44,
46, 48
Treitschke's idea of the, 155
States, constitutional, 68
responsibility of, 37
the society of, 106, 107
Submarine warfare, 238-243
Sully's alleged "Great Design,"
referred to, 176
Switzerland, coexistence of dif-
ferent races in, 66
future fate of, 155, 169, 237
taxation in, 60
Tannenberg, Otto Richard,
quoted or referred to, 91-
100
Thirty Years' War, referred to,
175
Trade rivalry, 33-34
Treaties, German drafts of fu-
ture, 101-102
Treitschke, referred to, 155
Trench defenses in the future,
160-161
Tribalism, struggle of human-
ism with, 5
Tribunals, international, see
Courts
Troppau, the Conference of, 19
Trusts, international, 207
Turkey, intervention in, 184
INDEX
289
relation of to Germany, 97
See also Ottoman Empire
Unions, international, 199-200
United States of America, in-
ternational law in the, 56
reasons of the for entering
the Great War, 236-245,
274
Utrecht, Congress of, 175
Vienna, Congress of, 19, 157
Villari, referred to, 11
War, the unlimited right to
wage, 19-21
Wars, duration of modern, 74—
76
results of trade rivalry, 34
Waterways, 206, 279
Wellington, Duke of, referred
to, 117
Weltpolitik, German dream of,
92
Westphalia, Peace of, its effect,
76
treaties of, 13
William I, German emperor, re-
ferred to, 142
William II, telegram from, 131
revolt against produced by
Daily Telegraph incident,
142
See also German Emperor
White, Hon. Andrew D., re-
ferred to, 267
Wilson, President, quoted or re-
ferred to, 243, 246, 278,
281
Zanzibar, 124
Zedlitz-Neukirch, Prussian dep-
uty, quoted, 262-263
Zimmermann, Herr, German
Secretary for foreign af-
airs, quoted, 240-241
Zeppelin air-ships, 126
JN